An efficient method for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of fetal trisomy 13, trisomy 18, and trisomy 21

BACKGROUND: Molecular size determination of circulating free fetal DNA in maternal plasma is an important detection method for noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT). The fetal DNA molecule is the primary factor determining the overall performance of NIPT and its clinical interpretation. The proportion of cell-free fetal DNA molecules is expressed as the fetal DNA fraction in the plasma of pregnant women. METHODS: We proposed an effective method to deduce fetal chromosomal aneuploidy based on the proportion of a certain range of DNA fragment lengths from maternal plasma. We gradually narrowed the range of the upper and lower boundary via a traversing algorithm. RESULTS: We explored the optimal range of the upper and lower boundary by using size-based DNA fragment length. Using this range, the accuracy of the sensitivity and specificity could be improved by up to 100% for detecting the three most common autosomal aneuploidies, namely trisomy 13, trisomy 18, trisomy 21 in the sample set. CONCLUSIONS: Numerical experiments demonstrate that our method is effective and efficient. The program is available upon request.