Rapid prenatal diagnosis of common aneuploidies in amniotic fluid using quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Quantitative fluorescent polymerase chain reaction (QF-PCR) is a successful prenatal diagnostic method which has been regularly used for the diagnosis of common chromosomal abnormalities in recent years. This method provides diagnosis of common aneuploidies in a few hours after sampling with a high throughput, very low error rates and low cost.

METHODS

In this study, 576 amniotic fluid samples were analyzed for trisomies 13, 18, and 21 and sex chromosome aneuploidies using different commercial QF-PCR kits (ChromoQuant version 1, Aneufast, ChromoQuant version 2). Test results were compared with those obtained by conventional cytogenetic analyses.

RESULTS

Nine cases of trisomy 21 (1.6%), 1 case of trisomy 13 (0.17%), 3 cases of trisomy 18 (0.52%), 1 case of Turner syndrome (0.17%), 2 cases of Klinefelter's syndrome (0.34%), 2 cases of triploidy (0.34%) and 1 case of XXX (0.17%) were detected by QF-PCR. The results obtained by QF-PCR were consistent with the results of cytogenetic studies (except for 2 samples which had structural chromosomal abnormalities which could not be detected by QF-PCR).

CONCLUSION

The QF-PCR method is an appropriate choice for rapid aneuploidy testing in our as well as in other populations.