Finding harmony in newborn blood spot screening

Every forty seconds, a baby is born in the UK. That’s nearly 775,000 births across the United Kingdom in 2016 alone. It’s important that each of these children is given their best chance at a healthy future from the moment they are born.

Currently, all parents of newborns in the UK are offered newborn blood spot screening, a test which detects nine conditions and inherited diseases, including cystic fibrosis, congenital hypothyroidism, and sickle cell disease. The level of hormones or amino acids in the blood at the time the sample is taken leads to early detection. The goal is to detect and treat conditions before they cause severe developmental problems or unnecessary suffering so children can lead as normal lives as possible.

With the number of infants tested each year and the use of nationally agreed protocols with specified cut-off values, harmonisation of methods across the 14 laboratories performing these tests is extremely vital.  Each time a sample is analysed, it should produce the same results. The cost and time of retesting samples can be great and can cause unnecessary stress to the families at an already challenging time.  Additionally, the network of newborn screening laboratories in the UK should have access to the newest, most accurate methods and data.

This is why we have partnered with Dr Rachel Carling, one of the country’s foremost authorities on newborn screening, and the NHS England as part of the CSO’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), a programme that teams up leaders in healthcare with the UK National Measurement System’s lab, including the National Measurement Laboratory (NML) at LGC, to solve measurement challenges in their fields.

Through the partnership, we plan to help create methods and materials that will lead to greater harmonisation and provide a framework within which more analytes can be added to the UK’s screening programme to be able to test for new diseases at birth.

As part of the KTP, LGC’s Chris Hopley and Simon Cowen will be discussing best practice in newborn screening with the network of labs at a workshop in London this week. Together, we hope to help deliver greater efficiency and certainty for these children and their families.