in Children’s Division of Genetics interviewed 173 families who had received false-positive screening results and a comparison group of 67 families with normal newborn screening results

In the June issue of Pediatrics, researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston report that false-positive results cause considerable parental stress, even when the baby proves negative on retesting, and that the stress could be alleviated by better education for parents and pediatricians.

Psychologist Susan Waisbren, Ph.D. and Elizabeth Gurian, M.S. in Children’s Division of Genetics interviewed 173 families who had received false-positive screening results and a comparison group of 67 families with normal newborn screening results.

Although mothers in the false-positive group were interviewed at least six months after their child’s diagnosis had been ruled out, they reported more worry about their child’s future and rated themselves less healthy than mothers in the comparison group.

Fifteen percent said their child needed extra parental care, versus 3 percent of mothers in the comparison group. After adjustment for socioeconomic factors, both mothers and fathers in the false-positive group had higher scores on the standardized Parenting Stress Index (PSI); 11 percent of mothers (versus no mothers in the comparison group) scored in the clinical range, in which treatment might be prescribed.

Waisbren and Gurian also found that false-positive tests affected the parent-child relationship: parents in the false-positive group scored more highly on two subscales of the PSI: a Parent-Child Dysfunctional Interaction scale and a Difficult Child scale. (The first asks parents to rate their agreement with statements like “I expected to have closer and warmer feelings for my child, and this bothers me”; the second has statements such as “My child makes more demands on me than most children.”)

Waisbren believes a positive test result can increase expectations of illness even when it is later found to be in error. “We’re not sure why — maybe it feeds into a general nervousness as new parents,” she speculates. “But our results also show that parental stress was greater when families didn’t have adequate information and understanding.”

Two-thirds of parents with false-positive results did not correctly understand why their child was called back for a repeat test, the study found. Mothers who knew the correct reason had reduced stress. (This was not true for fathers, however.)

Other findings:

The researchers suggest that improved and better-timed education may reduce parental stress related to newborn screening. “There needs to be a specific communication plan for informing parents at every step,” Gurian says. “Currently, pediatricians are the primary distributors of this information, but some pediatricians don’t feel knowledgeable enough about these rare metabolic disorders to explain a positive test to a parent. It would be good to begin involving obstetricians and to begin educating parents about newborn screening during the prenatal period.”

The study was funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) division of the Human Genome Project, National Institutes of Health.

According to the CDC, more than 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year undergo screening for biochemical genetic disorders, with severe disorders detected in about 3,000. One recent study suggests that there are at least 12 false-positive results for 바카라사이트 every true case diagnosed; another puts the ratio at more than 50-to-1.