Prenatal Information Research Consortium

12/04/2019

Check out PIRC members' newest publication on how US-based prenatal testing labs are complying with ACMG Guidelines!

Article

04/04/2019

None of the commercial laboratories that offer prenatal cell-free DNA screening (also known as non-invasive prenatal screening, or NIPS) in the United States follow all of the guidance from ACMG (the American College of Medical Genetics & Genomics).
PIRC researchers collaborated on a new study assessing 10 US commercial laboratories, and a table summarizing the results is publicly available on our website:

None of the commercial laboratories that offer prenatal cell-free DNA screening (also known as non-invasive prenatal screening, or NIPS) in the United States follow all of the guidance from ACMG (t…

08/07/2018

Spending the morning discussing international variation in prenatal testing options and counseling at !

30/06/2018

PIRC member Stephanie Hall Meredith makes the news with her great advice for other moms of kids with Down syndrome! Check out educational materials for parents at downsyndromepregnancy.org and lettercase.org.

A mom of an 18-year-old reflects and offers her advice.

22/06/2018

New resource from the American Academy of Pediatrics: an open-access collection of articles on the lifelong effects of toxic stress on children. It's also important to note that toxic stress can have similar effects during pregnancy - children born from women who are battling toxic stress are more susceptible to preterm birth, low birth weight, infant mortality, and lifelong health effects.

We have created a collection of articles on toxic stress since the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, the Committee on Early Childhood, Adoption and Dependent Care, and the Section on Behavior and Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics publi...

11/01/2018

With women increasingly inclined to know as much as possible about their pregnancies, simple blood tests are revealing a baby’s s*x and potential genetic anomalies at an early stage. But this non-invasive testing also raises difficult ethical questions

11/01/2018

Three major professional groups have issued a consensus statement recommending limiting the use of prenatal genome-wide testing. We sum up some key points in our newest blog post.

Genome-wide sequencing is increasingly being conducted on fetal tissues, either as whole exome sequencing (WES), whole genome sequencing (WGS), or targeted analysis that uses clinical panels. These…

13/12/2017

PIRC co-founder Dr. Megan Allyse sums up practical and ethical issues in gene editing and CRISPR technology.

Gene editing has captivated scientists and medical providers with tantalizing visions of wiping out debilitating inherited diseases.

01/12/2017

Non-invasive prenatal screening, or NIPS, has become a standard technique for screening pregnancies for the possibility of the three most common aneuploidies, trisomies, 21, 18, and 13. In this month's edition of GenePod, Genetics in Medicine's (GIM) monthly podcast, GenePod editor Cynthia Graber ex...

22/11/2017

Every day, more than 800 women around the world die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth -- and many of those deaths could be prevented if society dedicated itself to lowering maternal mortality rates, writes Every Mother Counts CEO Christy Turlington Burns.

20/11/2017

Katie Stoll posted a great blog on the risks of routinizing prenatal testing. Give it a read.

As a long time admirer, reader and guest blogger, I am thrilled to have been invited to write as a regular contributor for the DNA Exchange. Some recent statements about prenatal testing in the ne…