Faulty prenatal tests could be leading moms to aborting healthy fetuses.
Noninvasive prenatal testing, also known as cell-free DNA testing, is only accurate half the time at indicating that a fetus is at high risk for a chromosomal condition, according to an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR).
The tests are often marketed as being extremely accurate, which can alter the doctor's or parents' decisions on taking a supplementary test to determine if the fetus will be healthy or not.
The report, which sites an industry-funded study on the test, found that the rate of false alarms goes up the more rare the condition.
"The worry is women are terminating without really knowing if [the initial test result] is true or not," Athena Cherry, professor of pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, whose lab examined the cells of the healthy aborted fetuses, told NECIR.
Cherry told a story of a case where a woman had a second test after the noninvasive prenatal test showed she was carrying an unhealthy fetus. The second test showed the fetus was fine, but she aborted anyway because of the faith she had in the first test.
"She felt it couldn't be wrong," explained Cherry.
The woman's faith in the company was misplaced and her aborted fetus was actually healthy, according to Cherry's examination after the procedure was completed.
While some mothers are aborting their fetuses because of false claims of their future child allegedly having a disability, the reverse is occurring with mothers who were told their fetus was healthy after the screening.
Belinda Boydston, a web/graphic designer in Chandler, Ariz., underwent the screening while she was pregnant with her son. She was told that her odds of delivering a baby with a genetic condition was extremely slim.
The test was wrong and her son was born with Edwards syndrome - a disease associated with heart defects, development delays and extraordinarily high mortality. Her son died four days after he was born.
Company officials told NECIR they are currently focusing on the accuracy of all test results, including false positives, carrying out research on their frequency, and looking for ways to reduce the stress of these events.
