ACMG Statements and Guidelines
These online statements and guidelines are definitive and may be cited using the digital object identifier (DOI). These recommendations are designed primarily as an educational resource for medical geneticists and other healthcare providers to help them provide quality medical genetics services; they should not be considered inclusive of all proper procedures and tests or exclusive of other procedures and tests that are reasonably directed to obtaining the same results. Please refer to the leading disclaimer in each document for more information.
Response to Righetti et al
We thank Righetti et al1 for their interest in our article titled Screening for autosomal recessive and X-linked conditions during pregnancy and preconception: a practice resource of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG).2 We were pleased to learn that the investigators from the Australian Reproductive Genetic Carrier Screening Project (ARGCSP) are in agreement with many aspects of this practice resource.Screening for autosomal recessive and X-linked conditions during pregnancy and preconception: a practice resource of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG)
Carrier screening began 50 years ago with screening for conditions that have a high prevalence in defined racial/ethnic groups (e.g., Tay–Sachs disease in the Ashkenazi Jewish population; sickle cell disease in Black individuals). Cystic fibrosis was the first medical condition for which panethnic screening was recommended, followed by spinal muscular atrophy. Next-generation sequencing allows low cost and high throughput identification of sequence variants across many genes simultaneously. Since the phrase “expanded carrier screening” is nonspecific, there is a need to define carrier screening processes in a way that will allow equitable opportunity for patients to learn their reproductive risks using next-generation sequencing technology.
