The Changing Trends in Prenatal Diagnosis of Hemoglobinopathies in India: The Quest of a Single Center to Reduce the Burden of Disease over Three Decades

Abstract

The β-thalassemias and sickle cell disorders pose a considerable health burden in India. Of the more than 10,000 annual births of children with a severe hemoglobinopathy, only around 10.0% are managed optimally. Thus, genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis (PND) is a valid option for a large and diverse country. Our center was one of the first to initiate PND and we present our experience over 30 years to evaluate the impact of awareness in changing the trends of PND of hemoglobinopathies. Both second and first-trimester diagnoses were undertaken by fetoscopy/cordocentesis and globin biosynthesis/high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of fetal blood and chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and DNA analysis. Over 30 years, 3478 couples (first trimester: 2475; second trimester: 1003) from all over India were offered PND. The number of couples coming in the first trimester increased significantly over each decade and couples coming prospectively increased from 2.5 to 18.4%. A cost-effective stepwise approach was used for molecular analysis. Eight hundred and one fetuses (23.0%) were affected and all except three couples opted for termination of these pregnancies. Genetic counseling and PND is the only way to reduce the burden of disease. With awareness, there was a shift from second trimester to first trimester PND over each decade, with an increasing number of couples coming during the first pregnancy. There are only 15 to 20 centers in India offering PND. We have compared our study with other reports on PND from different regions in India.

Keywords:

• Hemoglobinopathies
• India
• molecular analysis
• prenatal diagnosis (PND)

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the efforts of the late Dr. H.M. Bhatia (Former Director, Institute of Immunohematology, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India) to initiate this program for PND diagnosis of hemoglobinopathies at the Institute. We are extremely grateful to all the obstetricians and sonologists who did the fetal sampling procedures over the years and all past staff and students for their technical support.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi, India.