Open AccessFecal Calprotectin: Diagnostic Accuracy of the Immunochromatographic CalFast Assay in a Pediatric Population
Author(s) -
Radillo Oriano,
Pascolo Lorella,
Martelossi Stefano,
Dal Bo Sara,
Ventura Alessandro
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of clinical laboratory analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.536
H-Index - 50
eISSN - 1098-2825
pISSN - 0887-8013
DOI - 10.1002/jcla.21886
Subject(s) - calprotectin , gold standard (test) , medicine , feces , gastroenterology , ulcerative colitis , inflammatory bowel disease , diagnostic accuracy , receiver operating characteristic , population , faecal calprotectin , disease , biology , paleontology , environmental health
Background Fecal calprotectin is a noninvasive marker for bowel diseases and it is high valuable to follow disease activity in Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). In this study, we evaluated the diagnostic performance of the recently introduced immunochromatographic assay CalFast in comparison to the well‐known ELISA tests for calprotectin assay to obtain a rapid diagnosis of bowel inflammation in pediatric patients. Methods CalFast was tested in parallel to the classic ELISA tests CalPrest and PhiCal (gold standards for the calprotectin determination) on 148 fecal samples from pediatric subjects including 104 healthy subjects, 29 with CD, and 15 with UC. Results In this study, the sensitivity and specificity of CalFast, CalPrest, and PhiCal were 86.4%, 88.6%, and 93.2% and 86.6%, 74%, and 64.4%, respectively. The area under the curve, obtained from receiver operating characteristic analysis, indicated the lack of significant difference among all the kits used. Conclusion The immunochromatographic assay demonstrated good diagnostic predictive values, comparable to those of the ELISA methods, and may represent a valid alternative in order to save operators' time. The test, in fact, has a short turnaround time and does not need a specific ELISA instrumentation.