(ISSN 2577-5790)
OBM Genetics is an international Open Access journal published quarterly online by LIDSEN Publishing Inc. It accepts papers addressing basic and medical aspects of genetics and epigenetics and also ethical, legal and social issues. Coverage includes clinical, developmental, diagnostic, evolutionary, genomic, mitochondrial, molecular, oncological, population and reproductive aspects. It publishes a variety of article types (Original Research, Review, Communication, Opinion, Comment, Conference Report, Technical Note, Book Review, etc.). There is no restriction on the length of the papers and we encourage scientists to publish their results in as much detail as possible.
Publication Speed (median values for papers published in 2023): Submission to First Decision: 5.1 weeks; Submission to Acceptance: 17.0 weeks; Acceptance to Publication: 7 days (1-2 days of FREE language polishing included)
Special Issue
Policy Issues in Prenatal and Neonatal Testing, Counseling, and Decision-Making
Submission Deadline: July 31, 2021 (Closed) Submit Now
Guest Editors
Diane B. Paul, PhD, Professor Emerita
University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, United States
Research Interests: newborn screening; phenylketonuria (PKU); prenatal testing and counseling; history of eugenics
Ilana Löwy, PhD, Senior Researcher Emerita
1. INSERM, France
2. French National Centre for Scientific Research, France
Research Interests: prenatal testing; material cultures of medicine; cancer risk and screening; biomedicine and gender; biomedicine in Brazil
About This Topic
Many aspects of prenatal and neonatal testing, counseling, and decision-making raise complex policy issues that are often fiercely contested and emotionally-charged. Should newborn screening expand to include all inheritable disorders detectable at birth or should it be restricted to those disorders where presymptomatic treatment is likely to significantly reduce mortality and morbidity? And which groups should be considered legitimate stakeholders in this debate? In the prenatal domain, the advent of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has converged with the increasing stigmatization of abortion and the mobilisation of disability-rights groups to provoke new political, social, and cultural challenges to the practice of pregnancy termination for fetal anomaly and also raised questions about what prospective parents should be told and by whom about the quality of life with inherited/congenital conditions. Who should counsel women and their partners after a positive prenatal diagnosis, and what kinds of information and advice should they provide? Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) avoids the issue of pregnancy termination but raises other issues related to selection for sex and against disability and the need to acquire and dispose of embryos. These are just a few of the fraught questions with which health-care providers, advocacy groups, and policy-makers are currently grappling.
For this special issue of OBM Genetics, we invite colleagues concerned with policy issues in either domain to submit original research articles, reviews, or opinion pieces. We especially welcome contributions from practitioners able to draw on their on-the-ground experiences.
Keywords
Neonatal testing; prenatal testing (PND); preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD); selective abortion; Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT); advocacy organisations; genetic counseling; disability-rights
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted through the LIDSEN Submission System. Detailed information on manuscript preparation and submission is available in the Instructions for Authors. All submitted articles will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process and will be processed following the Editorial Process and Quality Control policy. Upon acceptance, the article will be immediately published in a regular issue of the journal and will be listed together on the special issue website, with a label that the article belongs to the Special Issue. LIDSEN distributes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License in an open-access model. The authors own the copyright to the article, and the article can be free to access, distribute, and reuse provided that the original work is correctly cited.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). Research articles and review articles are highly invited. Authors are encouraged to send the tentative title and abstract of the planned paper to the Editorial Office (genetics@lidsen.com) for record. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office.
Welcome your submission!
Publication
The Regulation of Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) in France: Continuity and Changes in the Development of Prenatal TestingAbstract This article examines the regulation of the screening of fetal abnormalities in France before and after the implementation of the new technique of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in 2013. In addition, this article evaluates the effectiveness of the regulatory framework in addressing the ethical and social issues raised by this technique [...] |
Newborn Screening in Latin America: A Window on the Evolution of Health PolicyAbstract Investigating the historical origins of a well-accepted health program across a region, such as newborn screening in Latin America, has the potential to reveal the role of historically-specific drivers in shaping national health policy. We reviewed published reports on NBS in Latin America and interviewed newborn screening experts [...] |
Would I have Wanted to Know? A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Attitudes, Beliefs and Concerns about Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing for de novo Genetic Conditions after having a Child with a de novo Genetic DisorderAbstract Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) for a panel of 25 single gene disorders became available in Western Australia in 2020 and potentially may be able to test for panels of hundreds of disorders as is the case with reproductive carrier screening. How this information would be used by parents in a population screening model is unkno [...] |
Screening Before We Know: Radical Uncertainties in Expanded Prenatal Geneticsby
Daniel Navon
and
Gareth Thomas
Abstract In this article, we discuss the radical uncertainties unleashed by expanded prenatal genetics. We show how we are now routinely screening fetuses in the absence of two essential sorts of information. At the population level, we do not have sound, unbiased data about the prevalence, penetrance, and clinical variability of most mutations. At [...] |
Addressing Uncertainty: The Emergence of the CRMS/CFSPID Diagnostic Category Following Newborn Screening for Cystic FibrosisAbstract This article uses cystic fibrosis as a case study to examine how physicians and scientists have navigated uncertainty following newborn screening. Despite the many benefits of newborn screening, including earlier diagnosis, therapeutic intervention, and a reduced diagnostic odyssey, this public health approach also comes with chall [...] |
Quadruple Screening in the Age of Cell-Free DNA: What are We Losing?by
Alison Schmidt
and
Anthony Shanks
Abstract Cell-free DNA has emerged as the most reliable, non-invasive prenatal screening tool for fetal aneuploidies. It has come to replace the previously widely used quadruple screen offered in the second trimester of pregnancy. This change comes with improved detection for aneuploidy but also presents potential [...] |
Prenatal Testing – What Is It Good For? A Review and Critiqueby
Robert Resta
Abstract The goals of prenatal testing remain controversial and reflect competing interests of public health, patient rights, disability activists, scholars, feminist critics, commercial laboratories, judiciary/legislative trends, and medical science. This paper reviews and critiques the most common justifications of prenatal testing for [...] |
Imagining Life with a Genetic Disorder: The Challenge of Evaluating Health States that Exist from BirthAbstract This article explores difficulties encountered by those with no personal experience of a chronic disease or disability in accurately evaluating the quality of life with a condition present from birth. In most countries, cost-effectiveness analysis relies on ratings of health states by members of the general population, who must [...] |
| 2023 |  |
|
| CiteScore | SJR | SNIP |
| 0.4 | 0.160 | 0.093 |
TOP
Vidhi is a Clinical yoga therapist; mentor for yoga therapy training in Krishnamacharya tradition. She holds a MSc in Public health from Kings College London.
Mirela Olympia Fagarasan Palmer
Luigi Fontana, MD, PhD.jpg)
Zhong-Ting (Justin) is a PhD student from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He holds BSc in Applied Chemistry and MSc in Environmental Engineering. He was a R&D researcher of NanoMaterials Technology Pte Ltd in Singapore (2006-2012). His current research interests are functional nanomaterials synthesis & design, and their application into environmental/chemical engineering. He has published near 60 SCI papers in Applied Catalysis B, Chemical Engineering Journal and so on with H-Index 23. He also serviced as reviewers over 40 Journals such as Appl. Catal. B, Water Research, Chem. Eng. J, ACS Applied Materials & Interface, etc. He was honored such as “The Bsic Research Achievment 1st Award of CIESC”, “The ZJUT Fund Breeding Distinguished Young Scholars” etc.
Rolf Teschke studied Medicine in Munich and Marburg, where he finished his MD thesis before starting a residency at the Department of Pathology, University of Marburg. Subsequently and with a fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgmeinschaft, he worked at the Bronx VA Hospital/Mount Sinai Hospital in New York during 1972–1975 together with Professor Charles S. Lieber and successfully isolated MEOS and expanded its characterization. Back in Germany, he was at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf with a focus on alcoholic liver disease, biochemical drug studies, and clinical intoxications by halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons, where he became a Professor of Medicine. In 1987, he was offered a chief position and appointed as Director of the Medical Department II, City Hospital Hanau, Teaching Hospital of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. His clinical and research interests are on liver injury by drugs and herbs including causality assessment by RUCAM in close association with Dr. Gaby Danan in Paris. A perfect cooperation exists also with Professor Tran Dang Xuan of the University of Hiroshima, Japan. Finally, he is the author of more than 275 publications including books and book chapters, and he is editor in chief of scientific journals and member of editorial boards.