Agreement between Dried Blood Spots and HemoCue in Tamil Nadu, India

Scientific Reports 11: 9285, 2021 (with Rohini Bingewar, Sangeeta Kulkarni, Aprajit Mahajan, Reynaldo Martorell, Rukshan Meta, Reshma Roshania, Ashwini Shete, and Alessandro Tarozzi)

India retains the world’s largest burden of anemia despite decades of economic growth and anemia prevention programming. Accurate screening and estimates of anemia prevalence are critical for successful anemia control. Evidence is mixed on the performance of HemoCue, a point-of-care testing device most widely used for large-scale surveys. The use of dried blood spots (DBS) to assess hemoglobin (Hb) concentration is a potential alternative, particularly in field settings. The objective of this study is to assess Hb measurement agreement between capillary HemoCue and DBS among two age groups, children 6–59 months and females age 12–40 years. We analyzed data from the baseline round of a cluster randomized rice fortification intervention in Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, India.