Publication:

Comparative evaluation of NESTROFT and RDW as screening tests for beta thalassemia trait in pregnancy

Background Thalassemia is the commonest inherited hemoglobinopathy. It is estimated that there are about 45 million carriers of the beta thalassemia gene and about 15000 affected infants are born every year in India, thereby contributing to about 10% of the total thalassemia babies born all over the world. Beta Thalassemia Trait (BTT) is asymptomatic while Beta Thalassemia Major (BTM) presents with severe anemia and requires lifelong blood transfusion, so emphasis must shift from treatment to screening and offering prenatal counseling to affected parents.

Methods It was a hospital based cross sectional study on 500 antenatal women with microcytic hypochromic anemia with hemoglobin <9 gm% and MCV <80 fl and all these women underwent Naked Eye Single Tube Red Cell Osmotic Fragility Test (NESTROFT), High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and serum ferritin estimation.

Results In our study the sensitivity and specificity of NESTROFT was 93.3% and 95.7% respectively compared to Red cell Distribution Width (RDW) with a sensitivity and specificity of 66.6% and 78.9% respectively.

Conclusions For low resource settings like India, screening for beta thalassemia by NESTROFT is a cheaper and more reliable method with a high sensitivity and specificity and can be performed easily by paramedical staff.