Prenatal diagnosis of citrullinaemia: Review of a 10-year experience including recent use of DNA analysis

Prenatal diagnosis of citrullinaemia has been accomplished by three different methods to date: (1) enzyme assay of cultured fetal cells; (2) quantification of citrullirie in amniotic fluid supernatant; and (3) incorporation of ¹⁴C]citrulline into protein by cultured fetal cells. Our laboratory has used these methods to perform prenatal diagnosis for 28 fetuses over a 10-year period. More recently, DNA polymorphisms were used for prenatal diagnosis by linkage analysis. Of the 28 fetuses studied, 23 were predicted to be unaffected, four were predicted to be affected, and results were conflicting in one case where ¹⁴C]citrulline incorporation erroneously indicated an affected fetus but linkage analysis correctly predicted an unaffected fetus. Because of low levels of enzyme activity in heterozygotes and in certain amniotic fluid cell types, biochemical diagnosis of citrullinaemia is complicated by the risk of false affected results, although ¹⁴C]citrulline incorporation is relatively reliable. When informative, linkage analysis is the preferable method for cases with a 25 per cent risk. The risk of false affected results makes prenatal diagnosis for cases with less than 25 per cent risk of questionable value.