By Ainsley Pavey
A BRISBANE couple is set to give birth to a designer baby hand-picked from a test tube as part of a world-first IVF test.
The test, developed for Brisbane's City Fertility Centre, is set to revolutionise the booming IVF industry by allowing couples to select disease-free embryos.They will also be able to pick the gender, and safeguard against lab mix-ups by providing a DNA swab to match with the embryos.
The test, available nationally from July 1, involves taking a single cell from a three-day-old embryo and screening it for chromosome abnormalities which can lead to miscarriage and diseases, including cystic fibrosis and Down, Edwards and Patau syndromes.
The molecular technology, known as MF-PCR or multiplex fluorescent polymerase chain reaction, will cut down the time it takes to scan embryos for abnormalities to just a few hours.
The $500 test is also predicted to slash the cost of IVF treatments from up to $20,000 each.
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