When a Fetus's Test Finds a Mother's Cancer

By: Anna Nowogrodzki

Narrated by: Todd Mundt

Biology professor Erin Lindquist was in the middle of class when she got the phone call telling her that a prenatal test had returned abnormal results. Lindquist, who was 36 and pregnant with her second child, had had noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT), which looked for abnormal chromosomes in her blood. Since about 10 percent of DNA in maternal blood comes from the fetus, this test is used to detect fetal genetic abnormalities. The results were "very devastating", says Lindquist: an extra copy of chromosome 13 and a missing copy of chromosome 18. As recommended, she immediately followed up with amniocentesis, a more invasive test. The amniocentesis showed that the fetus was normal: the NIPT results had been a false positive. Her son Jackson was born healthy on October 4, 2012.©Massachusetts Institute of Technology (P)Massachusetts Institute of Technology