TY  - BOOK
AU  -     Luke R. Smart
AU  -  Patrick T. McGann   
AU  -  Russell E. Ware 
AU  -  Wilbur A. Lam
AU  -  Emmanuela E. Ambrose
AU  -  Kevin C. Raphael
AU  -  Adolfine Hokororo
AU  - Erasmus Kamugisha
AU  -  Erika A. Tyburski
TI  - Simultaneous point-of-care detection of anemia and sickle cell disease in Tanzania: the RAPID study
T2  - Annals of Hematology volume 97, pages 239–246 (2018)
PY  - 0000///162017///
CY  - Mwanza, Tanzania  
PB  - Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences CUHAS - Bugando
N2  - Abstract

Both anemia and sickle cell disease (SCD) are highly prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa, and limited resources exist to diagnose these conditions quickly and accurately. The development of simple, inexpensive, and accurate point-of-care (POC) assays represents an important advance for global hematology, one that could facilitate timely and life-saving medical interventions. In this prospective study, Robust Assays for Point-of-care Identification of Disease (RAPID), we simultaneously evaluated a POC immunoassay (Sickle SCAN™) to diagnose SCD and a first-generation POC color-based assay to detect anemia. Performed at Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza, Tanzania, RAPID tested 752 participants (age 1 day to 20 years) in four busy clinical locations. With minimally trained medical staff, the SCD POC assay diagnosed SCD with 98.1% sensitivity and 91.1% specificity. The hemoglobin POC assay had 83.2% sensitivity and 74.5% specificity for detection of severe anemia (Hb ≤ 7 g/dL). Interobserver agreement was excellent for both POC assays (r = 0.95–0.96). Results for the hemoglobin POC assay have informed the second-generation assay design to be more suitable for low-resource settings. RAPID provides practical feasibility data regarding two novel POC assays for the diagnosis of anemia and SCD in real-world field evaluations and documents the utility and potential impact of these POC assays for sub-Saharan Africa
ER  -