Reports

Ideas That Generate Results

It’s no longer unusual for women to marry post age 30 or to have their first child at 35 years of age. With the rise in the age of mother, her risk of having a baby suffering from Down’s syndrome increases. This is where NIPT, non-invasive procedures to identify subgroups of mothers who may have a baby with birth defects, come into the picture.

Nowadays, women and men are taking longer to complete their education, establish themselves at work, achieve financial independence and get married. As a result, over the past few years, birth rates among women in their teens or early 20s have been declining, while they’ve been rising among women in their early 40s. Apart from these common factors, issues such as consanguinity and advanced maternal age due to large family size are quite prevalent, especially in the Middle East Countries.

According to our report “Middle East NIPT Market Outlook”, the aforementioned factors have led to the emergence of the Middle East as a lucrative market for NIPT, whose total potential for the year 2013 was US$ 1.09 Billion. The report helps shed light on the present scenario in the Middle Eastern countries and elaborates on the role of evolving perception across the region in improving the scope of NIPT.

We have identified key countries within the Middle East which hold the maximum potential for NIPT. These countries include the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Kuwait and Qatar. In the report, we discuss the various drivers, challenges and regulatory developments that have helped shape the current market. We talk about the contribution of advanced maternal age and consanguinity to the high incidence of Down’s syndrome and its impact on the potential market. For every country, a detailed analysis has been presented in terms of the total number of births, the contribution of high risk mothers within the number of births and the total potential market.

At the end, we have presented recent developments around genetic screening and pregnancy termination that have taken place in the Middle East and their possible impact on the market. The report comes to a conclusion with a future outlook section which emphasizes how with regulatory developments such as Israel’s announcement of making abortions free, the attitudes towards prenatal screening are changing and how it will in turn benefit the NIPT industry.