Blood tests on pregnant people that look for rare and devastating developmental conditions in fetuses are often wrong, according to an investigation from The New York Times.
The blood testing technology, called noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), works very well for more common disorders like Down syndrome. But The New York Times reported that a review of data from multiple studies showed that when NIPT is used to test for uncommon things like Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome (which is found in one in 20,000 births) or Cri-du-chat syndrome (which is found in one in 15,000 births), positive results are wrong 80 percent of the time or more.
These tests, made by companies like Natera and Sequenom, have become more popular in recent years….
Source: TheVerge