A recent study, presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s annual meeting, The Pregnancy Meeting™, showed that non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) methods were able to detect 83.2 percent of chromosomal abnormalities, including the common trisomies, trisomy 13 (Patau syndrome), 18 (Edwards syndrome), and 21 (Down syndrome).
Invasive methods such as chorionic villus sampling (CVS) or amniocentesis still hold a majority of the prenatal testing market, as seen below. However, this study represents a significant step forward for prenatal diagnosis, as non-invasive methods are taken up in favour of their more invasive counterparts. Advances like this are expected to contribute to the growing Prenatal Testing Market in the US, which is experiencing a CAGR of 5.43 percent from 2014-2018.
Market growth in this area is being driven in part by the increase in maternal age in the United States and the corresponding increase in fetal abnormalities. One in 5,000 newborns in the US are affected by trisomy 18, and trisomy 13 affects one in 10,000 live births and stillbirths in the US. The estimated incidence of Down syndrome is much higher, sitting between 1 in 800 and 1 in 1,000 live births worldwide.
According to TechNavio analysts, these chromosomal abnormalities are detected in around 2 percent of all pregnancies in women aged 35 and over, which has increased the demand for prenatal testing in this demographic.
These success rates for NIPT are good news for the prenatal testing market in the US, as one of the major market challenges has been the risks associated with invasive diagnostic procedures like CVS and amniocentesis. While these methods are generally considered safe, and are more effective at detecting other rare aneuploidies, miscarriage is still one of the primary risks related to invasive testing procedures. Other risks include fetal loss, maternal Rh-sensitization, fetal morbidity and limb defects in the fetus. While these risks occur is only about 1 percent of procedures, they are still serious and frightening enough to discourage expectant mothers from pursuing prenatal testing.
According to a release issued by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Mary Norton, M.D., one of the NIPT study’s authors said that, “with this test, the patient makes a tradeoff between NIPT, which is non-invasive and detects most, but not all chromosome abnormalities—and is somewhat better in older women—and amniocentesis or CVS, which detect more chromosome abnormalities but with a small risk of miscarriage due to the procedure.”
As advances are made in the realm of both invasive and non-invasive prenatal testing methods, the market will continue to experience growth. Prenatal diagnosis gives parents and medical professionals a chance to manage high-risk pregnancies and provides advanced warning of any possible birth complications, which increases the chances of having a healthy baby. Because of this, the market will continue to experience moderate growth in the next four years.
For more information, view our Prenatal Testing Market in the US 2014-2018 report.
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