7% (Table 2). Only one child, a 5-year-old girl, had a heavy infection (128 eggs/10 ml of urine). There was no significant association between CCA(t?) results expressed as binary variable (presence/absence of disease) and S. haematobium egg counts (OR=1.2; p=0.81). Similarly, no significant association was found between scientific assays CCA(t+) results expressed as binary variable (presence/absence of disease) and S. haematobium egg counts (OR=1.2; p=0.11). Diagnostic Accuracy before Treatment Figure 2 shows the correlation between the intensity of S. mansoni infection determined by quadruplicate Kato-Katz thick smears, as expressed in EPG, and the CCA(t?) test shown in color scores. We observed a correlation between the color intensity of CCA(t?) test bands and EPG values (odds ratio (OR)=1.2, p=0.04).

Figure 2 Correlation between S. mansoni egg counts and CCA test color reaction scores. Comparing the two different methods used for the diagnosis of S. mansoni, we found moderate agreement between a single CCA(t?) test and quadruplicate Kato-Katz thick smears (��=0.47, p<0.001, Table 3). The agreement between duplicate CCA(t?) and quadruplicate Kato-Katz thick smears was only fair (��=0.36, p<0.001). Agreement between the two methods was weaker when considering trace results as positive in the urine CCA cassette test. Table 3 Agreement between Kato-Katz technique and POC-CCA cassette test for the diagnosis of S. mansoni. According to our ��gold�� standard, the sensitivity of a single CCA(t?) test (69.7%) was considerably higher than that of a single (28.3%) or quadruplicate Kato-Katz thick smears (47.

5%, Table 4). Also the NPV of a single CCA(t?) test (77.4%) was higher than that of a single (59.1%) or quadruplicate Kato-Katz (65.9%). The sensitivity and NPV of a single CCA(t+) test were higher than those of quadruplicate Kato-Katz and single CCA(t?) (sensitivity: 89.1%; NPV: 84.9%). The specificity of the Kato-Katz technique and CCA(t?) was 100% by definition, whereas the specificity of a single CCA(t+) was considerably lower (59.3%). Table 4 Sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value (NPV) of different approaches for the diagnosis of S. mansoni. Diagnostic Accuracy after Treatment Among the 86 individuals who had complete data records after treatment, S. mansoni eggs were detected by Kato-Katz from 22 (25.6%) individuals during the baseline cross-sectional survey.

A single POC-CCA, considering trace results as negative, revealed 34 preschoolers (39.5%) with an infection. Considering trace results as positive, then a considerably higher number of preschoolers were classified as positive (n=56, 65.1%). After treatment, among these 86 children, eggs of S. mansoni were only found in two (2.3%) individuals. A single urine CCA(t?) cassette test revealed 20 children (23.3%) Carfilzomib with S. mansoni, whereas CCA(t+) found 35 (40.7%) infections.