Can I get a Down syndrome screening if I have a cold?

A cold is a very important moment, so you should take good care of your body during a cold. However, due to the physical condition during a cold, many people cannot do some examinations even if they want to, especially pregnant women cannot do some examinations after a cold, so as not to cause the examination to lose its effect or low accuracy. Especially if you catch a cold when you are about to do Down syndrome screening, does this have any impact on Down syndrome screening?

There is no impact on Down syndrome screening for pregnant women if they have a cold. Down syndrome screening is the abbreviation for prenatal screening test for Down syndrome. Down syndrome is also called trisomy 21 syndrome, congenital idiocy. It means that the patient's 21st pair of chromosomes has one more than the normal person (normal people have one pair). It is the most common chromosomal aneuploidy disease.

Down syndrome screening is a detection method that extracts serum from pregnant women, tests the concentrations of alpha-fetoprotein, chorionic gonadotropin and free estriol in the maternal serum, and calculates the risk of giving birth to a fetus with congenital defects based on the pregnant woman's due date, weight, age and gestational age at the time of blood collection. If the results of the Down screening test show that the fetus is at a higher risk of Down syndrome, further confirmatory tests should be carried out - amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling.

Accuracy

Down syndrome screening can detect 60-70% of children with Down syndrome. It should be made clear that the Down syndrome screening test can only help determine the chance that the fetus has Down syndrome, but it cannot determine whether the fetus has Down syndrome. That is to say, when the blood test index is high, the chance of having a Down syndrome baby is higher, but it does not mean that there must be something wrong with the fetus. Just as older pregnant women over 35 years old have a higher chance of having Down syndrome babies, it does not mean that their fetuses will definitely have problems. On the other hand, even if the test index is normal, it cannot guarantee that the fetus will not be sick.

Pregnant women whose Down syndrome screening index exceeds the normal level should undergo amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. Only if the results of amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling are normal can the possibility of Down syndrome be 100% ruled out.

With the continuous development of technology, in addition to Down syndrome screening, non-invasive prenatal genetic testing can now be used to detect Down syndrome and chromosome 18 and 13 abnormalities. Non-invasive prenatal genetic testing can detect more than 99% of babies with Down syndrome. Like Down syndrome screening, the test only requires a blood draw from the arm, avoiding the increased risk of miscarriage caused by amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling.

For older pregnant women and those at high risk of Down syndrome, non-invasive prenatal genetic testing is another new option to amniocentesis. For ordinary pregnant women, non-invasive prenatal genetic testing can also be used as a better method for Down syndrome screening.