U.S. researchers stated on Monday that a safer prenatal blood test can be made by pregnant women to see whether their unborn child has Down’s syndrome. The test is safer because there is a slight risk for the fetus to be posed by amniocentesis or any other invasive testing methods.

Stephen Quake, from Stanford University in California, led the study and together with his colleagues he made a new way to search for extra chromosomes that can cause Down’s syndrome by testing the amounts of the fetus’ DNA in the mother’s blood.

The new test needs a small blood sample from the mother. This is said to be safer than amniocentesis, which consists of sticking a needle inside the uterus. Down’s syndrome can cause mental retardation and appears when a child has three chromosome 21 copies instead of two.

Quake and colleagues discovered that the test can also track down Edward syndrome also. This syndrome kills half of the babies in the first week of life. Patau syndrome can also be tracked down by the test. Patau disease 80% of the children while in their infancy.

The test was made on 18 women. 9 of them were discovered to have a Down’s syndrome pregnancy and 3 others were tracked down to have different chromosomal diseases. The test was published in the journal „Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”