Expanded Noninvasive Prenatal Testing for Chromosomal aneuploidies and Copy Number Variants in a Cohort of 16128 Single Pregnancies

Abstract Background: Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is based on second-generation genomic sequencing technology to scan cell-free fetal DNA originating from the placenta in maternal plasma. As the depth of sequencing increases, it can be used to focus on chromosomal aneuploidies, copy number variants (CNVs), and monogenic diseases. It can significantly improve the accuracy of prenatal screening and reduces the number of invasive testing.Methods: In this study, we retrospectively analyzed 16128 naturally conceived singleton pregnancies who underwent expanded NIPT to calculate the true positive rate (TPR) of chromosomal aneuploidies and CNVs, and analyzed the potential influence of maternal sex chromosome abnormalities (SCAs) and maternal CNVs on expanded NIPT results.Results: After invasive prenatal diagnosis and follow-up, 103 pregnancies were found to be true-positive, including 73 cases of chromosomal abnormalities and 30 cases of CNVs. The TPR of T21 was 84.62%, T18 was 50.00%, T13 was 22.22%, SCA was 34.06%, and CNVs was 40.28%. In addition, we found that the positive rate of aneuploidies increased with maternal age and that maternal SCAs accounted for 13.33% of the 60 false positive cases of SCAs.Conclusion: Expanded NIPT showed high sensitivity and specificity in detecting diseases of chromosomal abnormalities. It also shows good performance in detecting CNVs, but maternal SCAs and CNVs confused some NIPT results, indicating it is still necessary to study the potential maternal influence on expanded NIPT results and to report related clinical validation studies.