A new research shows that blood tests during pregnancy can identify the risk of preterm births.
In order to develop the test, researchers used microarrays to study various whole blood gene expression linked to spontaneous premature birth within 48 hours in women with premature labor that were admitted to hospital. The team explained that it is an important time frame to prevent premature birth.
Researchers pointed out that because the current preterm labor diagnostic assessment known as fetal fibronectin (fFN) test is easily affected by variables that can activate false positives, many women are unable to undergo fFN testing.
The researchers found that a set of nine genes as well as clinical blood data greatly estimated whether 70 percent of participants would or would not experience a preterm birth within 48 hours of hospital admission.
Furthermore, the study showed that the data from the nine genes in addition with clinical blood data was comparatively more accurate than the current standardized fFN test.
"A lot of TPTL women are unnecessarily hospitalized," researcher Professor Stephen Lye from the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada, said in a news release. "We want to develop a test that can differentiate between true and false labor so that women in true labor can receive the appropriate medical care while women in false labor will receive supportive care and be discharged."
Researchers said that the findings were important as premature birth is still one of the leading causes of infant mortality worldwide. Studies have shown that one in 20 women hospitalized with indications of premature labor will deliver preemies within ten days.
The findings are published in journal 'PLOS ONE.'
