Non-invasive prenatal screening for trisomy 21: Consumers' perspectives

Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) has the potential to dramatically increase the prenatal detection rate of Down syndrome because of improvements in safety and accuracy over existing tests. There is concern that NIPS could lead to more negative attitudes towards Down syndrome and less support for individuals with Down syndrome. To assess the impact of NIPS on support for prenatal testing, decision-making about testing, and beliefs or attitudes about Down syndrome, we performed an Internet-based experiment using adults (N = 1,789) recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants were randomly assigned to read a mock news article about NIPS, a mock news article about amniocentesis, or no article. The content in the two articles varied only in their descriptions of the test characteristics. Participants then answered questions about their support for testing, hypothetical testing decision, and beliefs and attitudes about Down syndrome. Reading the mock NIPS news article predicted increased hypothetical test uptake. In addition, the NIPS article group also agreed more strongly that pregnant women, in general, should utilize prenatal testing. We also found that the more strongly participants supported prenatal testing for pregnant women, the less favorable their attitudes towards individuals with Down syndrome; providing some evidence that NIPS may indirectly result in more negative perceptions of individuals with this diagnosis.