Bhubaneswar: With the advent of gene-based screening in medical science, screening can be done on pregnant women to check for certain types of mental ailments and their probability in the offspring.
Doctors and specialists working in the sector, however, claim that many of the screening tests shows the probability of developing a disease in the unborn child and are not 100 per cent precise. Doctors claim that patients can also minimize the chances of developing certain mental disorders like Down’s Syndrome by choosing the right age of marriage.
“We do have some genetic tests which are in their initial stages. They are yet to be corroborated and replicated. As of now, it has not been proved if a particular gene is responsible for a particular mental disorder. There is multi-gene involvement for such disorders,” said Amrit Pattojoshi, professor and head of the Department of Psychiatry, Hi-Tech Medical College.
He also added, “Blood tests can increase the chance of prediction of at risk individuals regarding their chance of having mental illness based on specific parameters (still in nascent stage). Others however claim that with offspring of late pregnancies often are said to have increased chances of developing some selected mental disorders like Down’s Syndrome.
“Studies have shown that in some cases where the first child is borne after 35 years or 40 years of the couple’s age, it increases chances of developing certain diseases like Down’s Syndrome which is a case of chromosomal abnormality. Its probability could also be checked through blood tests.”
Pattojoshi reteirated the fact that marrying late and having a child when both the parents are over 40 increases the chance of the offspring having neurodevelopment disorders including autism and mental retardation.
However, some of the diagnostic centres in the state claim to undertake high-level gene and DNA based tests to find out probabilities of mental disorder in the offspring. Many of the tests are also costly and run in lakhs of rupees. However many of the gynecologists often go for blood tests around the fifth month of pregnancy to weed out the probability of developing Down’s Syndrome among children.
