BACKGROUND Reliable antenatal identification of pre-eclampsia and small for gestational age is crucial to judicious allocation of monitoring resources and use of preventative treatment with the prospect of improving maternal/perinatal outcome. The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the accuracy of five serum analytes used in Down's serum screening for prediction of pre-eclampsia...

  Abstract   Background: Regarding the variety of tests present for detecting and also screening   prostate cancer and also bearing in mind the advantages and disadvantages of   these tests we decided to re-evaluate these tests (total prostate specific antigen and all   of its modifications) in detecting prostate cancer in men with intermediate serum   PSAlevels.   Methods: Following a cross se...

OBJECTIVES To examine the effect of deviations in median nuchal translucency thickness (NT) and the spread in measurements on the performance of screening for trisomy 21 by maternal age and fetal NT, and by maternal age, fetal NT and maternal serum biochemistry. METHODS We simulated the NT and multiples of the median values for pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A) and free beta-huma...

BACKGROUND In the United States, Down syndrome screening is still performed mainly in the second trimester, using 3 or 4 markers. Moving screening into the first trimester has the advantage of earlier diagnosis. Currently, first-trimester screening typically includes maternal serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein-A (PAPP-A), the free beta-subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin (free beta),...

National guidelines recommend that all pregnant women be offered screening for fetal chromosomal abnormalities, the majority of which are aneuploidies (an abnormal number of chromosomes). The trisomy syndromes are aneuploidies involving 3 copies of 1 chromosome. Trisomies 21 (T21), 18 (T18), and 13 (T13) are the most common forms of fetal aneuploidy that survive to birth. Noninvasive prenatal s...

Protein S100 is a low molecular weight (10-12 kD) calcium-binding protein the beta subunit of which is coded for at the 22.2-22.3 region of the long arm of chromosome 21. This region has also been shown to be responsible for the phenotypic expression of Down syndrome. Previous studies demonstrated increased immunoreactivity to protein S100 in brain tissue from adults with Down syndrome. We have...

Note: It should be noted that appropriate training of ultrasonographers with ongoing quality assurance programs are considered critical to the accurate measurement of fetal nuchal translucency. In addition, in published studies of first trimester screening, the laboratory and imaging components of screening (i.e., fetal nuchal translucency and measurement of maternal serum factors) are performe...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the potential value of maternal serum placental growth factor (PlGF) and soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1) at 35-37 weeks' gestation in the prediction of delivery of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) neonates, in the absence of pre-eclampsia (PE). METHODS This was a screening study in singleton pregnancies at 35-37 weeks, including 158 that delivered SGA neona...

Prenatal detection of chromosome abnormalities has been offered for more than 40 years, first by amniocentesis in the early 1970s and additionally by chorionic villus sampling (CVS) in the early 1980s. Given the well-recognized association between increasing maternal age and trisomy,1-3 the primary utilization of prenatal testing has been by older mothers. This has drastically reduced the incid...

BACKGROUND To examine whether maternal serum levels of müllerian-inhibiting substance (MIS) differ in Down's syndrome and unaffected pregnancies. METHODS Case-control study was conducted using stored serum from an antenatal screening programme. Sera from 25 Down's syndrome pregnancies were retrieved from -20 degrees C storage together with 125 unaffected controls individually matched for mate...