Sunday, January 27, 2019

Baby Genome identify risks overlooked by newborn screens

An article posted by The Scientist explains how tons of babies from the US are screened every day and certain diseases can be overlooked because we don't do the appropriate tests. A study which was published by The American Journal of Genetics which basically tested the risks that babies had for certain diseases that were not being shown in traditional screenings of newborns. A project was designed by geneticists Alan Beggs and Robert Green and bioethicist Amy Mcguire called BabySeq which was a randomized controlled trial. In the trial, they sequenced 159 babies and 15 were found to have traits associated with certain childhood-onset diseases. However, these findings were all predictive and the babies could possibly never develop the diseases in the future.

I think it's interesting to see how far we have come in terms of medical advancement where we would actually be able to see what babies were at risk for diseases. Although this study did say it was just a predictive trial it's amazing how far we can go with this and hopefully in the future if we are able to do this effectively then there is a possibility that we can treat the disease faster or cure it.

Image result for baby screenings

2 comments:

  1. I found this article to be very interesting because it is amazing how far technology has advanced over the years. It is sad that screenings for babies are overlooked because appropriate tests are not preformed, but now there are trial tests to detect early onset of childhood diseases. I do agree that these tests should be used more often because if technology is able to detect a disease early on in a baby's life, then it may be able to be cured and not progress over its childhood years.

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  2. There was a time, not so long ago, when science was not even capable of determining a baby's sex in utero. Many times these extra tests are not performed because they can be costly if insurances do not cover them. It is in my experience that the higher the risk the pregnancy, the more likely doctors are to do the more thorough testing.

    -Erica Midili

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