The national evaluation programme, announced by the government earlier this year and due to begin in October 2026, will now include all babies born in England. Originally designed to screen 755,000 newborns, the programme has been expanded so that every baby will be offered testing for SMA.
The nationwide rollout builds on a study, led by Professor Laurent Servais of the University of Oxford’s Department of Paediatrics. Supported by the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre (BRC): Oxford, the original pilot introduced England’s first routine newborn screening for SMA across four hospital trusts in the Thames Valley, including Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) NHS Foundation Trust.
SMA is a rare, but treatable, genetic disease affecting approximately one in 10,000 births, typically presenting in infancy and early childhood. It is caused when part of a gene, called survival motor neuron 1 (SMN1), is missing or disrupted. SMA progressively, and irreversibly, destroys the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control movement, leading to progressive and irreversible muscle weakness.
Read the full story on the Department of Paediatrics website.