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Use of a Test Diet in Screening for Neuroblastoma Reduces False‐Positives Attributable to Food Intake
Author(s) -
SAITO T.,
NIKKAWA T.,
USUGANE T.,
OKAMOTO T.,
KOMIYA H.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
acta pædiatrica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1651-2227
pISSN - 0803-5253
DOI - 10.1111/j.1651-2227.1990.tb11356.x
Subject(s) - medicine , false positive paradox , urine , orange juice , false positive rate , physiology , food science , statistics , chemistry , mathematics
. We attempted to reduce false‐positives during screening for neuroblastoma using a qualitative urine test by introducing a test diet without foodstuffs known to cause false‐positive results. In preliminary in‐vivo experiments, intake of contra‐indicated foods such as orange juice or banana was shown to result in high percentages of false‐positive results several hours after food intake. False‐positive results were obtained even after 24 hours among breast‐fed infants whose mothers received orange juice. In a controlled field trial the false‐positive rate was reduced to 2.84% among 540 infants taking the test diet compared with 5.05% among 9844 control infants following conventional guidance on contra‐indicated foods (p < 0.05). For comparison, a questionnaire survey of nationwide screening in Japan in 1987 revealed that 66% of the screening centres employed qualitative urine tests, either a Spot or Dip method. False‐positive rates, including those due to inappropriate urine collection, ranged from 0.4 % to 33.7% (mean 7.1%). Rates ranged from 0.2% to 18.7% (mean 3.4%) in the remaining 34% of screening centres employing a quantitative method with high performance liquid chromatography.