British researchers revealed a new embryo screening advance -- similar to DNA fingerprinting -- on Monday that could help more couples avoid the risk of having children with severe genetic disorders.
The new technique was developed by the Guy's and St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, which is made up by two of London's oldest teaching hospitals.
Experts hope it will improve the reliability -- and success rate -- of such screenings for families watching out for diseases like cystic fibrosis, sickle cell and spinal muscular atrophy.
The standard screening test, known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD, helps identify specific mutations in genes. The new work, which is called Preimplantation Genetic Haplotyping, is essentially a new way of analyzing the data to zero in on chromosomal "markers" in DNA.
"Because the markers act like a DNA fingerprint, it gives us a more accurate diagnosis," Alison Lashwood, a consultant nurse in genetics and PGD who worked with the team who developed the new technique.
Such "fingerprinting" enables the scientists to distinguish between the chromosomes carrying the affected genes and those which do not. The work is applied to a relatively small percentage of the population who are genetically predisposed to such diseases, Lashwood said.
The research work, which was published in peer-reviewed Reproductive BioMedicine Online, was presented in Prague, Czech Republic, during the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology's 22nd annual conference.
Though most couples are fertile, they would use IVF -- treatments such as those used by infertile couples, the trust said in a statement. A single cell is extracted from each embryo -- which at the time is only eight cells in all -- and analyzed to compare against those embryos which carry the genetic disorder and those that do not.
The unaffected embryos are then transferred in hopes of a pregnancy without the genetic condition, the trust said.
It said five pregnancies had been achieved so far.
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