To the Editor: Cell-free fetal DNA in the maternal circulation holds great potential for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis (1, 2). However, the manual isolation of cell-free DNA from plasma can be a time-consuming process, and current techniques involving spin columns usually require multiple reloadings of the columns with sample material, increasing the risk of contamination (3–5). Use of an auto...

in plasma and showed that filterable GAPDH mRNA species are present, and therefore likely to be particle bound, whereas the majority of ␤-globin DNA is not filterable and thus is not particle bound. Our study analyzed cell-free nucleic acids in amniotic fluid for the presence of particle-associated mRNA species , and like Ng et al. (7), we found the greatest decrease in GAPDH mRNA after filtrat...

Small amounts of DNA circulate in both healthy and diseased human plasma/serum, and increased concentrations of DNA are present in the plasma of cancer patients. Characteristics of tumor DNA have been found in genetic material extracted from the plasma of cancer patients. These features include decreased strand stability, the presence of specific oncogene or tumor suppressor gene mutations, mic...

BACKGROUND The recent discovery of the presence of circulating cell-free fetal DNA in maternal plasma opens up new prenatal diagnostic applications and provides new avenues for clinical investigation. It is of research and potential diagnostic interest to determine whether fetal trisomy 21 may be associated with quantitative abnormalities of circulating fetal DNA in maternal plasma. METHODS M...

We applied a noninvasive prenatal test for the determination of fetal gender in multiple pregnancies by using free fetal DNA circulating in maternal blood in order to evaluate whether the quantification of male DNA could distinguish the fetal gender and the number of male and female fetuses in multiple pregnancies. We enrolled consecutively 44 women with twin pregnancies between 11-14 weeks of ...

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the role of cell-free fetal DNA (cff-DNA) in the maternal plasma in the prenatal diagnosis of chromosomal abnormalities. Methods: The results of cell-free DNA detection of maternal plasma were retrospectively reviewed in 1440 pregnant women, and the pregnancy outcomes were followed up. Results: (1) Of 1440 pregnant women, 20 had a high risk for trisomy...

SNR separates meaningful information (signal) from background information (noise). In statistical applications of SNR, signal is equivalent to a random variable expectation, and noise is equivalent to its variance. Here, cell-free DNA material (containing both maternal and fetal DNA) from pregnant plasma is tested for detection of genomic events in fetal DNA. The fractional fetal DNA in a sampl...

The effects of epidermal growth factor (EGF), insulin, and a transforming growth factor from fetal bovine serum on protein synthesis, DNA synthesis, and morphology in confluent cultures of AKR-2B mouse cells have been examined. The cells were plated and grown to confluence in serum-containing medium, and then the medium was changed to MCDB 402 containing no undefined supplements for 2 days befo...

The effects of epidermal growth factor (EGF), insulin, and a transforming growth factor from fetal bovine serum on protein synthesis, DNA synthesis, and morphology in confluent cultures of AKR-2B mouse cells have been examined. The cells were plated and grown to confluence in serum-containing medium, and then the medium was changed to MCDB 402 containing no undefined supplements for 2 days befo...