Florence Tushabe, Samuel Mwesige, Okoth Thomas, Ivan Kasamba and Areu David
Background: Maize and groundnuts are staple foods in Uganda. These foods are prone to aflatoxin contamination during preharvest and post-harvest stages. However, there is a shortage of screening tests that can be used to routinely detect for presence or absence aflatoxins which are a hazard to human health. The available aflatoxin tests in the market have no established validity. It is, therefore, important to determine the extent to which these tests are able to identify the likely presence or absence of a condition of interest so that their findings encourage appropriate decision making. This study compared the diagnostic performance of the Elabscience Lateral Flow Immuno Assay in detecting aflatoxins between maize and ground nuts samples. We also determined discordances of aflatoxin contamination between maize and ground nut sample compositions using ELISA assay.
Results: Lateral Flow Immuno Assay showed aflatoxin diagnostic sensitivity of 11.1%, specificity of 85%, PPV of 25% and NPV of 68% in ground nut samples compared to diagnostic sensitivity of 0%, specificity of 85%, PPV; 0% and NPV of 51.5% in maize samples. Maize whole seeds and homogenized/ crushed foods were more contaminated with aflatoxins than ground whole seeds and homogenized/crushed foods. The difference in aflatoxin contamination between maize and groundnut foods was not statistically significant (p=0.23). Conclusion: Lateral Flow Immuno Assay has a low aflatoxin diagnostic power with sensitivity ranging from 0-11% and specificity of 85%.