Prenatal Screening, False Positives, and NYT's Coverage

On January 1, 2022, the New York Times published an article focused on the high false positive rates of micro-deletions and -duplications in non-invasive prenatal screening tests NIPS/NIPT. The article was entitled, “When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong.” The reaction on Twitter from genetic counselors was mostly negative and critical. I discussed this article and genetic counselors’ reaction to it with certified genetic counselor Katie Stoll.

Articles/Podcasts Discussed:

Kliff, Sarah and Aatish Bhatia. “When They Warn of Rare Disorders, These Prenatal Tests Are Usually Wrong.” New York Times, January 1, 2022.

“An Investigation into Flawed Prenatal Tests: How screening for chromosomal abnormalities that promised ‘peace of mind’ instead caused anguish and confusion.” The Daily Podcast, New York Times. January 4, 2022.

Katie’s tweet related to genetic counselors’ backlash to the article on Twitter.

Related Articles and Resources:

Skoto, et al. “Adherence of cell-free DNA noninvasive prenatal screens to ACMG recommendations.” Genetics in Medicine. April 3, 2019.

Table of adherence to 2016 ACMG guidance for NIPS laboratories. Prenatal Information Research Consortium.

Screening for Fetal Chromosomal Abnormalities: ACOG Practice Bulletin, Number 226. October 2020.

Noninvasive prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy, 2016 update: a position statement of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics

Landucci, Kelly. “NIPS: More Than Just a Sex Reveal.” Grey Genetics News Corner. April 22, 2019.

Find Katie on Twitter @katie_stoll, LinkedIn, and on The DNA Exchange.

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