Observational studyScience (New York, N.Y.)2018
Noninvasive blood tests for fetal development predict gestational age and preterm delivery.
Observational study in Science (New York, N.Y.), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to 2 registered trials, which are not on this map. Cited by 157 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Low Doses Of Aspirin In The Prevention Of Preeclampsia (ASAPP)
Prediction of the Onset of Term and Preterm Labour (PREDICT)
Who cites it
157 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 266 citations in OpenAlex.
- Molecular Mechanism and Pathways of Spontaneous Preterm Birth in Different Gestational Tissues: A Systematic Review of Transcriptome Studies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Pooled it
- Early gestational prediction of spontaneous preterm birth using a validated three-protein serum biomarker panel.BMC medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Is there a maternal blood biomarker that can predict spontaneous preterm birth prior to labour onset? A systematic review.PloS one · 2022Pooled it
- Circulating Nucleic Acids in Maternal Plasma and Serum in Pregnancy Complications: Are They Really Useful in Clinical Practice? A Systematic Review.Molecular diagnosis & therapy · 2020Pooled it
- Variants in the fetal genome near pro-inflammatory cytokine genes on 2q13 associate with gestational duration.Nature communications · 2019Pooled it
- The amniotic fluid cell-free transcriptome in spontaneous preterm labor.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- The bivariate NRIP1/ZEB2 RNA marker permits non-invasive presymptomatic screening of pre-eclampsia.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Trial
- Multimodal immune phenotyping of maternal peripheral blood in normal human pregnancy.JCI insight · 2020Trial
- The Cellular Transcriptome in the Maternal Circulation During Normal Pregnancy: A Longitudinal Study.Frontiers in immunology · 2019Trial
- Early characterization of pregnancy glycemic traits in gestational diabetes mellitus by plasma cell-free mRNA and non-coding RNA.Epigenetics · 2026Article
- Deconformer: efficient cell-type composition profiling of cfRNA across diverse cell types.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- The Pathophysiology of Spontaneous Preterm Birth: Emerging Mechanisms Reviewed by the Preterm Birth International Collaborative.Reproductive sciences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) · 2026Review
- Cell-free RNA reveals host and microbial correlates of broadly neutralizing antibody development against HIV.PLoS pathogens · 2026Article
- Maternal amino acid metabolites during pregnancy and preterm birth: results from two prospective cohort studies.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Benchmarking large language models for predictive modeling in biomedical research with a focus on reproductive health.Cell reports. Medicine · 2026Article
- From virtual pregnancy to digital twin obstetrics: multimodal data integration for personalized prediction of pregnancy complications.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Review
- Article
- Identification of Gestation-Specific Patterns of Physiological, Protein and Cell-Free RNA Injury Markers in a Sheep Model of Regulable Preterm Fetal Hypoxia.Reproductive sciences (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) · 2025Article
- Cell type inference in cell-free nucleic acid liquid biopsy.Nature biotechnology · 2025Review
97 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
18 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Noninvasive blood tests that provide information about fetal development and gestational age could potentially improve prenatal care. Ultrasound, the current gold standard, is not always affordable in low-resource settings and does not predict spontaneous preterm birth, a leading cause of infant death. In a pilot study of 31 healthy pregnant women, we found that measurement of nine cell-free RNA (cfRNA) transcripts in maternal blood predicted gestational age with comparable accuracy to ultrasound but at substantially lower cost. In a related study of 38 women (23 full-term and 15 preterm deliveries), all at elevated risk of delivering preterm, we identified seven cfRNA transcripts that accurately classified women who delivered preterm up to 2 months in advance of labor. These tests hold promise for prenatal care in both the developed and developing worlds, although they require validation in larger, blinded clinical trials.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.