a man not afraid to experiment on women
Helen and Graham wrote:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/babys-sex-test-offers-new-hope/2005/12/06/1133829597883.html
Baby's sex test offers new hope
* By Julie Robotham Medical Editor
December 7, 2005
AUSTRALIAN doctors have identified the sex of 22 foetuses as early as
five weeks into pregnancy from cells taken from their mother's cervix,
in a "proof of concept" experiment they say could lead to improved
tests for conditions such as Down syndrome and cystic fibrosis.
Gab Kovacs, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Melbourne's Box
Hill Hospital, said women would welcome the opportunity to know their
foetus was healthy as early as possible during pregnancy.
Where an abnormality was detected and the woman chose termination,
this would involve fewer risks and medical complications if it could
be done earlier. At present, the earliest test that can determine
definitively if a foetus is affected by Down syndrome is chorionic
villus sampling, in which placental cells are cultured around 11 weeks
of pregnancy. But the test is invasive, and occasionally triggers
miscarriage of healthy foetuses. Amniocentesis, conducted later in
pregnancy, has similar drawbacks.
Professor Kovacs's initial study, reported this week in the
/Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology/,
was carried out in women who were having abortions. The scientists
compared the sex of the foetus identified from foetal cells in the
women's cervical mucus with the sex chromosomes they found in the
placenta after the termination. The results matched in all cases.
The next phase would be to conduct a larger study in women who were
continuing their pregnancies, Professor Kovacs said. This would
provide extra information about the reliability of the method, which
uses polymerase chain reaction (CVS) technology to confirm the cells
are not from the mother and the sex of the foetus. "We have ethics
committee approval to do that in an antenatal population," Professor
Kovacs said. Detecting abnormalities would be no more difficult
technically than determining sex, he said.
The trial would also confirm the technique - which Professor Kovacs
described as causing "less discomfort than a Pap smear" - was safe for
the mothers and babies. But it would be at least five years before it
could go into widespread use.
Andrew McLennan, a consultant in foetal medicine at Royal North Shore
Hospital, said previous attempts to isolate foetal cells had failed,
and Professor Kovacs's technology was still at a very early stage.
If the new technique proved effective, Dr McLennan predicted it would
initially be used with more traditional tests.
A woman whose cervical mucus test showed she was at increased
likelihood of having a baby with an abnormality could be referred for
amniocentesis or CVS, he said, while women with more reassuring early
results might opt not to have further testing.
Australian statistics show that more than 90 per cent of women whose
foetus is diagnosed with Down syndrome choose to terminate the pregnancy.
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