Comparative genomic hybridization analysis of fetal chromosomal aberrations

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) can now be applied to detect the origin of extra or missing chromosomal material in cases with common unbalanced aberrations and in prenatal investigations. This method has been used in 13 cases of fetal samples for this study; 3 for amniocytes, 2 for cord blood and 8 for abortus tissues. These samples were previously subjected to GTG-banding. Our study showed aneuploidy in 8 cases, and partial monosomy, partial trisomy or marker chromosome in the remaining 5. The CGH disclosed further small genetic imbalances in 4 of all 13 cases: a prenatal sample showing del(20)(q13) by GTG confirmed a loss of the segment 20p13-pter by CGH; a marker chromosome manifested normal CGH profile; chromosome der(?)(?;15) found in an abortus sample by GTG turned out to be a loss of 15pter-q14 (partial monosomy) and a gain of 10pter-q22 (partial trisomy); the der(15) shown by GTG represented partial trisomy of 3q24-qter. These findings show that CGH is very useful and efficient for cytogenetic investigations of clinical cases.