Prenatal Analysis of Cell-free Circulating Fetal DNA

In criminal cases involving sexual assault, victims may later discover they are pregnant, creating profound uncertainty about the paternity of the fetus. These distressing situations compound the trauma already experienced by the victims. To address this, the Medico-Legal Hematology Laboratory (LHML) in Bordeaux aims to validate a method based on Massively Parallel Sequencing (MPS) and a specific isolation protocol for analyzing cell-free circulating fetal DNA (ccfDNA) in maternal blood samples. This identification process will confirm or exclude paternal genetic relationships between the fetus and potential fathers between 6 and 22 weeks of amenorrhea. These analyses will only be conducted under judicial requisition, in accordance with the French Code of Criminal Procedure