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An enormous marketplace for uncommon circumstances
Between 2011 and 2013, a small Silicon Valley-based biotech firm, Sequenom, tripled in measurement. The important thing to its success: MaterniT21, a brand new prenatal screening take a look at that did remarkably properly at detecting Down syndrome.
Older screening checks took months and required a number of blood checks. This new one generated fewer false positives with a single blood draw.
The take a look at might additionally decide the intercourse of a fetus. It shortly turned a success. “You had folks strolling in saying, ‘I would like this intercourse take a look at,’” recalled Dr. Anjali Kaimal, a maternal-fetal drugs specialist at Massachusetts Common Hospital.
Opponents started launching their very own checks. At this time, analyst estimates of the market’s measurement vary from $600 million into the billions, and the variety of ladies taking these checks is predicted to double by 2025.
As corporations started searching for methods to distinguish their merchandise, many determined to begin screening for extra and rarer issues. All of the screenings might run on the identical blood draw, and docs already order many checks throughout quick prenatal care visits, which means some most likely thought little of tacking on a number of extra.
For the testing firm, nonetheless, including microdeletions can double what an insurer pays — from a median of $695 for the essential checks to $1,349 for the expanded panel, in accordance with the well being information firm Live performance Genetics. (Sufferers whose insurance coverage didn’t totally cowl the checks describe being billed wildly totally different figures, starting from a number of hundred to 1000’s of {dollars}.)
However these circumstances have been so uncommon that there have been few cases for the checks to search out.
Take Natera, which ran 400,000 checks in 2020 for DiGeorge syndrome, a dysfunction related to coronary heart defects and mental incapacity.
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Supply- nytimes