SCID Newborn Screening: One Year Later

The Health Resources and Services Administration has released the report it submitted to the Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius one year after adding SCID screening Recommended Uniform Screening Panel. Some of the highlights:

*To date, 961,925 newborns have been screened and 60 infants, or approximately 1 in 16,032, have been identified with some form of immune deficiency.

*Fourteen infants with SCID (~1 in 68,000) have been diagnosed and received treatment.

*No missed cases of SCID have come to the attention of the newborn screening programs conducting the pilots.

*Emerging findings from the pilots are advancing understanding of SCID and triggering new research efforts.



(All items taken from the report which can be downloaded in PDF format here.)

This is amazing! I am a little stunned by the numbers they mention in the report. I know I had heard about increased incidence among hispanic and closed populations, but I was really surprised by the Puerto Rico findings. I'm hopeful that perhaps this report can help encourage other states to go forward with screening efforts. Let's increase this from covering 25% of US births to 100%!