Circulating cathodic antigen cassette test versus haematuria strip test in diagnosis of urinary schistosomiasis

Urinary schistosomiasis caused by Schistosoma haematobium constitutes a major public health problem in many tropical and sub-tropical countries. This study was conducted to evaluate circulating cathodic antigen cassette test and haematuria strip test for detection of S. haematobium in urine samples and to evaluate their screening performance among the study population. Microscopy was used as a gold standard. A total of 600 urine samples were examined by microscopy for detection of S. haematobium eggs, screened for microhaematuria using Self-Stik reagent strips and screened for circulating cathodic antigen (CCA) using the urine-CCA cassette test. The specificity of CCA, microhaematuria and macrohaematuria was 96.4, 40.6 and 31.2 % respectively while the sensitivity was 88.2, 99.3 and 100 % respectively which was statistically significant (P