IndomitabIe
^Wow, I've just looked up just how expensive it is. That's somewhere between a month's mortgage and a month's childcare. Woah.
Got put off before I could check, but do they only check for Down's & other trisomies or will it pick up other genetic conditions? (DH has a genetic condition).^
Yes, it was between those two figures for us too.
I read recently that if the NHS did NIPT for all women it would actually cost slightly less overall than the current screening because the false positive rate (when the test says baby could have a problem but they really don't) is much lower, so you have many fewer amnios and CVs to do, and as a result many fewer normal babies are lost to miscarriages that are induced by the diagnostic procedures. You'd also see terminations (if that's what the parents chose) happening several weeks earlier, which is both medically and psychologically easier, which generally equals lower cost. It's possible too that fewer children would be born with trisomies as fewer cases would be missed during early pregnancy, giving more parents the option to choose to continue or not.
It's an interesting topic, and one that will grow in the public consciousness as DNA sequencing becomes cheaper and more widely available. I expect, personally, that NIPT screening will routinely be offered on the NHS to expectant mothers over 35 within the next few years, and that we will see that age limit come down over time.
All the NIPTs check for the three most common trisomies: T21 (Down's), T18 (Edward's), T13 (Patau); and the sex chromosome abormalities: XXX (Triple X), XXY (Klinefelter), X (Turner), and XYY (not actually a disorder as boys with this are developmentally normal and it's relatively common at 1/1000 births). I believe one or both of the Panorama and NIFTY non-invasive prenatal tests also checks for some microdeletions.