NICE Recommends Roche Diagnostics’ Placental Growth Factor-Based Test

The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended Roche Diagnostics’ Elecsys test for National Health Service (NHS) use in routine placental growth factor (PLGF) testing.

The PLGF assay joins NICE’s list of recommended tests for people with suspected preterm pre-eclampsia, a rare complication from pregnancy characterized by high blood pressure.

The test was previously recommended for ruling out pre-eclampsia, but not to identify the condition, because of concerns that this would result in people being unnecessarily offered early births. NICE said that these concerns were not warranted.

The Elecsys PLGF reagent kit is intended for use with the company’s soluble FMS-like tyrosine kinase-1 (sFlt-1) reagent kit for detecting the sFlt-1 protein that inhibits placental growth.