Clinical Utility of SNP Array Analysis in Prenatal Diagnosis: A Cohort Study of 5000 Pregnancies

Background: Single nucleotide polymorphism array (SNP-array) has been introduced for prenatal diagnosis. We aimed to evaluate the clinical value of SNP-array in the diagnosis of fetal chromosomal anomalies.

Methods: A retrospective study was conducted on 5000 cases tested by SNP-array, and the results of 4022 cases analyzed by both karyotyping and SNP-array were compared.

Results: SNP-array analysis of 5000 samples revealed that the overall abnormality detection rate by SNP-array was 12.3%, and the overall detection rate of clinically significant copy number variations (CNVs) by SNP-array was 2.6%. SNP-array identified clinically significant submicroscopic CNVs in 4.5% fetuses with anomaly on ultrasonography, in 1.6% of fetuses with advanced maternal age (AMA), in 2.5% of fetuses with abnormal result on maternal serum screening, in 2.9% of fetuses with abnormal non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) results and in 3.0% of fetuses with other indications. Of the 4022 samples analyzed by both karyotyping and SNP-array, SNP-array could identify all the aneuploidy and triploidy detected by karyotyping but did not identify balanced structural chromosomal abnormalities and low-level mosaicism detected by karyotyping.

Conclusion: SNP-array could additionally identify clinically significant submicroscopic CNVs, and we recommend the combination of SNP-array analysis and karyotyping in prenatal diagnosis.