What Is a Carrier Screening?
Carrier screening helps individuals or partners to reduce the chances of a genetic disorder. It helps you in sharing the risk of your passing an inherited genetic disorder to your child.
Carrier screening is a type of genetic test that analyzes your DNA to provide specific information about your child’s risk for certain genetic disorders.
What Does It Mean to Be a “Carrier” of a Genetic Disorder?
If you are a carrier, it means you have a change in one copy of a gene that increases the risk of your child inheriting disorders. For most disorders, both partners have to be carriers but there are a few disorders that are linked with females and most commonly affect the boys.
Carriers most often do not have any family history of the disorder
Carriers are healthy and usually do not show any symptoms
Worry not, reproductive options are available to help you out to reduce the risk.
Who Should Consider a Carrier Screening?
Are currently pregnant or planning a pregnancy
Are at increased risk for a specific disorder
Have a family history of a genetic disorder
Plan to donate eggs, sperm, or embryos
Want to reduce the risk of disorders
What Is a Non-Invasive Prenatal Screening
Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) is genetic testing that helps in early detection and screening of abnormalities that can impact the health of your baby. The test can be done as early as 10 weeks into your pregnancy.
Is NIPS right for me?
NIPS is the earliest screening of chromosomal disorder and an early opportunity of understanding the risks that can affect your baby.
What Do I Need to Know?
Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS)
It is safe and has no attached risk of miscarriage
Non-invasive testing and is performed on your blood sample
It is a screening test that can provide you with an estimated probability and not the exact answer
NIPs can check most common medically impactful conditions
NIPS + Carrier Screening
Carrier screening is another type of genetic testing that can help you and your specialists in identifying whether you are a carrier of a genetic disorder that can affect your child, even if you do not have a disorder yourself.
Adding a carrier screening test provides an in-depth understanding of the smaller types of genetic changes in your baby’s chromosome.
