Summary:
Both iron deficiency and thalassaemia trait can present with
hypochromic microcytic morphology. Naked eye single tube
red cell osmotic fragility (NESTROF) is an inexpensive and
simple test which can effectively differentiate iron deficiency
anaemia from thalassaemia trait. Our study was an
opportunity to observe the role of NESTROF in screening
of thalassaemia trait among our study population. Initially
NESTROF was carried out in 677 patients (N) population
of four groups having both positive and negative
NESTORF; for economical issue, auto-analyzer study and
haemoglobin electrophoresis were done among only 100
randomly selected subjects, who were finally included in
our study as final study population (n). In our study,
NESTROF was 94.23% sensitive and its specificity was
92.08%. The predictive value of a positive test was 88.13%
and predictive value of a negative test was 96.24%. Our
study showed, NESTROF can effectively differentiate iron
deficiency anaemia (IDA) from thalassaemia trait but, is
not effective in co-existent IDA and thalassaemia.