Baby gender blood test

It looks like there's a medical breakthrough in the making that will soon enable parents to reveal their unborn baby's gender earlier than ever before!

Sequenom, Inc., a company in Grand Rapids at Medical Mile, San Diego, California, is developing the gender prediction test that will become the earliest existing test for gender in the near future.

SensiGene Fetal (XY) gender detection blood test works at incredible early 12 weeks!

That's significantly earlier than telling the gender with ultrasound.

This gender detection test uses a sample of mother's blood to predict the gender of the fetus. It analyses circulating cell-free fetal DNA within the blood of a pregnant woman to try to identify male-specific targets on the Y chromosome, distinguishing between maternal and female fetal DNA, to tell a boy or a girl. "So when you have female DNA, you know you're not looking at the mother's, you're looking at baby's DNA", said a spokesman for Sequenom.

He also claimed that the average age of gender prediction was 12 1/2 weeks, six weeks earlier than ultrasound detection, the standard method.

During testing phase more than 700 mothers took the test and the accuracy was amazing: more than 98% of the time the test was correct in identifying baby's gender!

No wonder that creators of SensiGene Fetal (XY) gender detection blood test expect it to be very popular.

A survey they conducted on 400 expectant mothers suggests that 80% would like to learn the gender of their unborn children if it were safe, affordable and convenient.

And why not?

Spokesman said: "I think the overwhelming thing is, they just wanted to know." Besides a simple curiosity of parents wanting to know what gender to expect, testing for a boy or girl definitely resolves the question: what color to paint the nursery?

Test will not likely be covered by insurance.

It can only be ordered by a physician in order to avoid abuse. This "allows for the right choices to be made between the physician and patient during the discussion of the care of that particular individual's pregnancy", Sequenom's spokesman asserts.

Expect to pay about $395 to have your blood sample sent to Sequenom's laboratory for analysis.