Efficacy of Solubility Test in Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Disorders

Sickle cell anaemia (SCA) is a genetic disorder characterised by severe haemolytic anaemia and shorter life span. Diagnosis is an important aspect in the management of disease.

In the present study, we tried to assess the efficacy of solubility test in the diagnosis of SCA in large population. A total of 23,420 patients were screened. All the positive samples with solubility test were further analysed on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) ‘BIO-RAD’ analyser for the confirmation along with distinction of SCA (heterozygous) and sickle cell disease (homozygous).

Out of all the patients screened, 4,555 were found to be positive with solubility test. A total of 4,022 samples were diagnosed as SCA (heterozygous) and 533 samples were diagnosed as sickle cell disease (homozygous) with HPLC.

Solubility test is very effective with 100% sensitivity. Specificity calibrated was on average 91.66%, with predictive value of positive test ~80% and a predictive value of negative test 100%.