Manchester: Yourgene Health (part of the Novacyt group of companies), a leading international molecular diagnostics group, today announced the launch of IONA® Care+, a fully comprehensive non-invasive prenatal screening service for genetic conditions, in the UK. The service will utilise Yourgene’s IONA® Nx NIPT Workflow to deliver safe, fast and accurate non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) results. This reduces the need for invasive tests and the associated risks, while helping to decrease stress and anxiety for expectant parents.

IONA Care+ builds upon Yourgene Genomic Services’ current NIPT offering, providing an extensive menu-based approach where expectant parents can select screening tests to measure the likelihood that a fetus is affected by a genetic condition. Yourgene’s NIPT Service screening menu includes Down’s, Edwards’ and Patau’s syndromes (trisomy 21, 18 and 13, respectively) and other autosomal aneuploidies and monosomies as well as sex chromosomal aneuploidies, such as Turner, Triple X, Klinefelter and Jacobs syndromes. With the launch of IONA Care+, the comprehensive menu now includes clinically relevant microdeletion syndromes, namely DiGeorge Syndrome, Prader-Willi, Angelman, 1p36 deletion, Cri-du-Chat and Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome.

NIPT is performed on a small maternal blood sample from as early as 10 weeks gestation and uses next generation sequencing to estimate the risk of a fetus being affected by a genetic condition. Expectant parents and healthcare professionals can choose the most suitable NIPT service from three different clinical options to suit their individual needs: the IONA test for the three most common trisomies including Down’s Syndrome, the IONA Care which includes trisomies and sex chromosome aneuploidies, and now the IONA Care+ which includes clinically relevant microdeletions. Screening results will be available from Yourgene Genomic Services’ laboratories in Manchester, UK within 3–5 working days via their local midwife or private clinic. The test is only available for singleton and monochorionic twin pregnancies.

Lyn Rees, CEO of Novacyt, said: