General Practitioners perspectives on infant telomere length screening after a pregnancy complication: a qualitative analysis.

Around one fifth of women experience a pregnancy complication that places their infants at higher risk for a range of chronic diseases in later life. Although not all infants will have adverse health outcomes, it is important to identify offspring early in life who may be at higher risk. Telomere length is a biomarker of future chronic disease that can be obtained from blood or saliva. Whether telomere length might be useful as a screening tool in newborns born from a pregnancy complication has not been investigated. This study qualitatively explores the perspectives of 12 general practitioners in Adelaide, Australia, on the feasibility and uptake of telomere screening in children born after a pregnancy complication. Overall, general practitioners were generally supportive of potential telomere screening in infants, particularly via a saliva test that could be embedded in current antenatal care. However, several challenges, such as lack of knowledge, ethical considerations, and time and financial constraints, need to be overcome before such a test could be implemented into practice. Study findings contribute to the limited knowledge assessing follow-up of screening after pregnancy within Australia and internationally and provide novel findings on a potential new screening tool that could be considered early in life.