If you are pregnant, one of the questions you likely hear the most from friends, family or co-workers is whether your baby is a boy or a girl. In the past, you could not find out your baby's gender until birth. Today, however, there are various...
Parents once had to rely exclusively upon old wives tales regarding the size and shape of a mom-to-be's belly or her degree of morning sickness to give them clues to their unborn baby's gender. Modern science allows many parents to find out the...
Parents often want reassurance that their child is normal before birth. Sometimes, they have specific concerns about genetic diseases that run in their families or that are related to advanced maternal age, such as Down syndrome. Fetal genetic...
Every pregnancy has a risk that the fetus carries a serious genetic defect. Doctors have developed ways to calculate the risk of a serious chromosomal abnormality fairly early in pregnancy. In the first trimester, nuchal translucency, or the...
DNA testing is a common procedure used to identify individuals based off of what is present in their DNA code. Although 99.9 percent of DNA is shared between all human beings, the remaining 0.1 percent is what makes us individual from one another....
When prenatal screening identifies features of a genetic syndrome or there is a family history of genetic disease, a woman's health care provider may suggest prenatal genetic testing. Baby's DNA, obtained by chorionic villus sampling--commonly...
Genetic diseases are caused by defects in genes, segments of DNA that govern specific characteristics in a person. Common genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease aren't always inherited, but may occur as a spontaneous...
