Uncertainty of fetal fraction determination in Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening by highly polymorphic SNPs

Publication date: Available online 26 April 2019Source: Journal of BiotechnologyAuthor(s): Marian Grendár, Dušan Loderer, Zuzana Laučeková, Iveta Švecová, Michaela Hrtánková, Andrea Hornáková, Bálint Nagy, Pavol Žúbor, Zora Lasabová, Ján DankoAbstractFetal fraction and the chromosome representation are the two key quantities used in Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening (NIPS) to determine the aneuploidy status of a fetus. Several methods for fetal fraction determination have been proposed in the literature, including a class of the methods, denoted snpFF, based on high-coverage targeted sequencing of highly polymorphic Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). The variant of snpFF, investigated here, has similar properties as the other variants of snpFF. We point out that the variability of the individual informative SNPs-based estimates of fetal fraction increases with the increase of fetal fraction. At 4% fetal fraction the Inter-Quartile Range (IQR) of the individual estimates of fetal fraction is around 3% and it increases to 6% at 15% fetal fraction. snpFF cannot detect fetal fraction below 2.5% because the number of informative SNPs becomes too small, even zero.

Source: Journal of Biotechnology - April 28, 2019 Category: Biotechnology Source Type: research