Newborn Screening: 50 Years of Saving, Changing Lives

Nashville, TN – For the past half-century, millions of babies across America have been getting their heels pricked for a tiny drop of blood. The stick is part of a process known as newborn screening, which helps identify health problems quickly and has saved countless children from a variety of lifelong disabilities.

Newborn screening was developed by Robert Guthrie, MD, a researcher who was troubled by the early childhood health problems of his son and a niece. Guthrie developed a method in the late 1950s and early 1960s to analyze a spot of dried blood to identify a condition known as phenylketonuria.

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