Efficacy of Dichlorophenolindophenol (DCIP) as Screening Test for Hb E: Revisited

Hb E-beta thalassemia is a major public health problem in West Bengal, India and is the predominant symptom producing thalassemia in this part of the country. To search for an easy, reliable and cost effective screening method for HbE that can be used at the community level where more sophisticated methods are not readily available. And the DCIP test was performed for the purpose. Blood samples of 425 asymptomatic family members from 80 diagnosed cases of HbE beta Thalassemia patients were tested for Hb, RBC indices, DCIP test, HPLC, and in discordant cases confirmed by DNA mutation analysis. The present study shows DCIP screening test to have a sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of 96.39%, 97.43%, 96.39% and 97.43% respectively. It also shows a false positive rate and false negative rate in 2.56% and 4.6% cases respectively. The advantage with DCIP over HPLC is that it can be easily performed at the community level by a person with minimum technical skill, few samples (even a single sample) can be tested at time, at a low cost.