Maternal sex chromosome aneuploidy identified through noninvasive prenatal screening: clinical profile and patient experience

Objective: Non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) may incidentally identify maternal aneuploidies that have health implications, such as maternal monosomy X. We evaluated patients’ experience with counseling and follow-up diagnostic testing after NIPS flags a potential maternal sex chromosome aneuploidy (SCA). We hypothesized that patients were routinely offered, and completed, diagnostic follow-up genetic testing after SCA is detected on NIPS. Study Design: Patients who underwent NIPS at two reference laboratories between 2012 and 2021 and had test results that were consistent with possible or probable maternal SCA were contacted with a link to an anonymous survey. Survey topics included demographics, health history, pregnancy history, counseling, and follow-up testing. Results: 269 patients responded to the anonymous survey, and 83 of these individuals also completed one follow-up survey (Figure 1). Most (75%) received pre-test counseling. 80% were offered fetal genetic testing during the pregnancy, which was completed in 25% of respondents. Only 35% of patients completed diagnostic maternal testing (Figure 2). Patients with monosomy X-related phenotypes were more likely to have follow up testing that led to a diagnosis of monosomy X in 14 cases (6%, Figure 2). Two patients with diagnostic testing that confirmed mosaic Turner’s had no phenotypical findings. No other clinical or demographic factors were associated with an abnormal maternal karyotype on diagnostic evaluation. Conclusion: Follow up counseling and testing after a high-risk NIPS result suggestive of maternal SCA is heterogenous in this cohort and may be frequently incomplete. We observed that the presence of Turner’s phenotype increased the likelihood of diagnostic testing in this cohort. However, the incomplete penetrance of SCA phenotypes in the population could hinder the performance of this strategy. Health outcomes may be affected by SCA and an effective strategy for definitive testing could improve the provision, delivery, and quality of post-test counseling

Transnational capital unbound? A critical institutionalist perspective on the marketization of corporate control in Serbia and Turkey

Although active markets for corporate control have proliferated beyond liberal market economies, marketization has not become universal and indeed takes different forms. Although there is a growing body of literature that analyses marketization, systemic underlying dynamics shaping the specific trajectory of marketization have been scarcely addressed. Drawing on a critical institutionalist perspective, this article analyzes the marketization of corporate control against the backdrop of the structural problem of overaccumulation and locates the variegated trajectory of marketization in the specific interplay between the state and different capital fractions. This article focuses on Serbia and Turkey. Serbia has witnessed a substantial marketization of corporate control which comprises the adoption of (foreign) investor friendly market-enabling regulations and a growing number of majority acquisitions which were often followed by efficiency-oriented restructurings. By contrast, in Turkey, state capital alliances hampered the marketization of corporate control, and advocated for regulations which still allow for the selective prioritization of certain capital fractions. </jats:p

The political economy of EU competition rule export: unravelling the dynamics of variegated convergence in Serbia and Turkey

As part of the key conditionalities for EU membership, candidate states have to establish a competition authority as well as competition rules, using the EU’s neoliberal competition regime as a yardstick. Turkey and Serbia are two candidates that have closely modelled their competition regimes on EU standards but have also deviated in important respects. Scholarly work usually takes EU conditionalities for granted and focuses on institutional configurations or elite socialisation to explain varying degrees of convergence, while the substantive nature of remaining discrepancies is often not accounted for. Drawing on a historical materialist approach, this article locates the EU’s competition rule export in the structural problem of overaccumulation, and the variegated trajectories of rule adoption in the specific nexus between the state and organised capital fractions. In Turkey, close ties between small and medium-sized businesses and the state ensured protectionist features, whereas the Serbian state ultimately aligned with open-market-oriented transnational capital and eliminated most of the initial discrepancies

Beyond Conditionality versus Cooperation: Power and Resistance in the Case of EU Mobility Partnerships and Swiss Migration Partnerships

Migration partnerships (MPs) have become a key instrument in global migration governance. In contrast to traditional unilateral approaches, MPs emphasize a more comprehensive and inclusive tackling of migration issues between countries of origin, transit, and destination. Due to this cooperation-oriented concept, most of the existing studies on MPs neglect power questions within partnerships in line with the official discourse, reflecting a broader trend in the international migration governance literature. Others take an instrumentalist view in analysing the power of partnerships or focus on soft power. Illustrated with the examples of the European Mobility Partnerships (EU MPs) and the Swiss Migration Partnerships (CH MPs), we conduct an analysis based on a concept of productive power drawing on post-structural and post-colonial insights. Our main argument is that in contrast to their seemingly consent-oriented and technical character, MPs are sites of intense (discursive) struggles, and (re-)produce meanings, subjects, and resistances. A productive power analysis allows us to move beyond the dichotomy in the literature between coercion and cooperation, as well as between power and resistance more broadly