Sequenom Laboratories, San Diego, has signed an agreement with UnitedHealthcare to provide prenatal diagnostic testing services for the insurance company’s 43 million covered individuals throughout the United States. The agreement will go into effect on October 1, 2015.
Sequenom Laboratories is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sequenom Inc, a life sciences company that serves patients and physicians by developing innovative products and services, and providing early patient management information. The UnitedHealthcare contract brings the number of covered lives under agreement for Sequenom Laboratories’ diagnostic services to more than 200 million.
Under the agreement, Sequenom will provide UnitedHealthcare physicians and their patients with prenatal diagnostic testing services using the company’s MaterniT21 Plus, HerediT CF carrier screen, and HerediT Universal carrier screen laboratory-developed tests. The tests are available exclusively through Sequenom’s CAP-accredited and CLIA-certified molecular diagnostics laboratory, as testing services provided to healthcare professionals.
Estimates suggest there are about 750,000 pregnancies at high risk for fetal chromosomal abnormalities each year in the United States.
Sequenom’s MaterniT21 Plus test reports on trisomy 21, 18, 13, 16 and 22, sex chromosome aneuploidies, fetal sex, and select microdeletions in single or multifetal gestations as early as 10 weeks in a pregnancy. The HerediT CF carrier screening test analyzes the most clinically relevant mutations and variants related to cystic fibrosis.
The HerediT Universal carrier screening test is a comprehensive, customizable expanded test that screens for more than 250 diseases and more than 2,000 disease-causing mutations.
Sequenom’s molecular genetic laboratory-developed tests provide early patient management information for obstetricians, geneticists, and maternal fetal medicine specialists. To learn more about the tests, visit Sequenom Laboratories.
