Prenatal Diagnosis of Fetuses With Increased Nuchal Translucency by Genome Sequencing Analysis

Abstract

Background: Increased nuchal translucency (NT) is an important biomarker associated with increased risk of fetal structural anomalies. It is known to be contributed by a wide range of genetic etiologies from single-nucleotide variants to those affecting millions of base pairs. Currently, prenatal diagnosis is routinely performed by karyotyping and chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA); however, both of them have limited resolution. The diversity of the genetic etiologies warrants an integrated assay such as genome sequencing (GS) for comprehensive detection of genomic variants. Herein, we aim to evaluate the feasibility of applying GS in prenatal diagnosis for the fetuses with increased NT.