ICMR develops cost-effective diagnostic test for blood disorders

New Delhi: In a major medical development, the ICMR-NIIH, Mumbai has developed a cost-effective point-of-care (POC) rapid diagnostic test for severe Hemophilia A and von Willebrand disease (vWD).

According to a senior ICMR official, the development of the rapid diagnostic test would prove to be a great boon for poor patients in general as the working cost of these kits is less than Rs 50 in comparison to existing conventional test for the diseases that cost around Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000. India has become the world's first country to develop POC test for specific diagnosis of any common bleeding disorder, the official said.

Haemophilia A and vWD are the commonest among bleeding disorders. As per the Western data, the incidence of Haemophilia A is 1 per 10,000 male births and that of vWD is around 1 per cent of the general population.

"In India, there is no epidemiological data and with translation of this data with respect to the population, the country may have roughly 80,000-1,00,000 severe haemophilia cases, but the total number registered with Haemophilia Federation India (HFI) is only around 19,000," the official said, adding that lack of awareness, lack of diagnostic facilities, high cost of tests are some of the factors for the underdiagnosis of bleeding disorders in the country.

"Both haemophilia A and vWD are underdiagnosed disorders in our country and there are only a handful of comprehensive diagnostic centres for bleeding disorders," the official said.

"The newly developed rapid test kit could be used for the diagnosis of undiagnosed patients/menorrhagia cases/post-partum haemorrhage (PPH), gynaecological complications with bleeding history, recovery of factors in the transfused Haemophilia A patients and also for differential diagnosis of both the diseases," the official said.