Detection of Apoptotic Fetal Cells in Plasma of Pregnant Women

Enrichment, Immunomorphological, and Genetic Characterization of Fetal Cells Circulating in Maternal Blood

“…The prenatal detection, using FISH, of fetal cells with three chromosome-21 signals in the maternal plasma has recently been reported. 19 This approach is also interesting, however fetal cells are found only rarely in plasma (1 in 500 to 1 in 2000) and are mainly apoptotic cells 20 and hence not the best target for genetic analyses. Furthermore, euploid fetal cells from female fetuses cannot be identified by this approach.…”

Quantification of fetal nucleated cells in maternal blood of pregnant women with a male trisomy 21 fetus using molecular cytogenetic techniques

“…Some fetal cells, while in the maternal circulation, are engaged in the apoptotic process (Sekizawa et al, 2000;van Wijk et al, 2000) and are fragile, becoming lost during the harvesting procedure. Three milliliters of the total blood sample was used for direct harvest, whereas the remainder was used for an enrichment method (data not published).…”

A new methodology to preserve the original proportion and integrity of cell‐free fetal DNA in maternal plasma during sample processing and storage

“…A limiting factor for using fetal cell-free DNA as a source of nucleic acids for prenatal diagnosis is its low abundance in maternal blood, accounting for only 3.4-6.2% of the total cell-free DNA (Lo et al, 1998;Lo, 2000). To detect and study rare DNA targets such as fetal cell-free DNA, it is necessary to minimize the background of nontargeted maternal cell-free DNA (Van Wijk et al, 2000;Hahn and Holzgreve, 2002;Chiu and Lo, 2004;Hung et al, 2009). A considerable portion of the cell-free DNA present in maternal blood samples may be non-native and comes from the lysis of maternal nucleated blood cells largely due to the way that the blood is processed.…”