Looking at a baby's heart through the lens of the mother's blood.

Abstract

Congenital heart disease (CHD) comprises several cardiovascular abnormalities existing from birth. Cardiac defects range from minor asymptomatic lesions to potentially life-threatening situations. Early fetal echocardiography, the gold standard for the in-utero diagnosis of CHD, is inaccurate at identifying defects in pulmonary veins and atrioventricular valves or lesions that occur later or progress during pregnancy. In this issue of EMBO Molecular Medicine, Yin etal report new proteomic data on maternal blood samples and a novel bioinformatic and artificial intelligence approach for the early diagnosis and screening of CHD.