Journal of Advanced Medical Research Vol.2 No.2, June 2012, 55-60 A Novel Method for Early Detection of Down’s Syndrome on Sudanese Pregnancy Amin A. E. Elzaki 1,2a , H. Osman 2 , N.I.Ali 3 , I.G.Abdulrahman 4 1 Alzaiem Alazhari University, Sudan 2 Taif University KSA 3 Sudan Atomic Energy Commission Sudan 4 Joba University SUDAN a Aminzaki2000@yahoo.com Article Info Received: 20 th December 2011 Accepted: 16 th April 2012 Published online: 1 st June 2012 ISSN: 2231-8313 © 2012 Design for Scientific Renaissance All rights reserved ABSTRACT Based on 1988 cross-sectional data, the lifetime economic costs of Down’s syndrome DS have been estimated to be $410,000 per case. With a poor Sudanese society, such a like high cost investigations are not available in Sudanese hospitals. By the other hand, the risk for DS and certain other chromosome anomalies increases substantially with advancing maternal age. Once again the maternal age of the Sudanese women is increasing in the last two decades. So that screening test during pregnancy is becoming highly recommended to avoid such pregnancies. The purpose of the study is to establish a local reference values for Serum Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin hCG and Alpha Fetoprotein AFP, in the first trimester of gestation to evaluate the use of these two serum markers as a method of choice for screening early detection of fetal DS at the same gestational age. A maternal serum of 176 women was obtained. Samples were taken at the first trimester and both hCG and AFP were evaluated by score without regard for the maternal age-related DS risk. A sensitive and highly specific immunoradiometricassay IRMA based on I 125 radiolabeled monoclonal antibody was used for a quantitative determination of hCG & AFP. Diagnosis was confirmed by ultrasonography U/S in the second trimester. Both hCG and AFP and age result showed statistically significant differences between the unaffected and DS groups, where p-values were (0.001). Multiple of Median MoM of DS for hCG and AFP was (>3.3 and <0.25) respectively. Local reference values which took from 95 percentile confident intervals for hCG and AFP have been established, and could replace the European values. With the current methodology serum markers hCG and AFP can be used further in screening for early detection of DS on Sudanese pregnant females. Keywords: Pregnancy, Down’s syndrome, immunoradiometricassay 1. Introduction DS, Trisomy 21 is a congenital syndrome caused by trisomy of all or part of chromosome 21, is the most common chromosome abnormality. Population-based surveillance programs have reported a DS birth prevalence of 0.9/1,000 live births (Palomaki et al., 1987). The incidence of DS is higher than the birth prevalence, however, since many fetuses are spontaneously aborted, some are recognized in utero and electively aborted, and some cases