COMPARISON OF STOOL ANTIGEN TEST OVER UREA BREATH TEST IN DETECTION OF HELICOBACTER PYLORI INFECTION AMONG PATIENTS ATTENDING NSAMBYA HOSPITAL IN KAMPALA DISTRICT.A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY.

Abstract

Background

H. pylori infection rates are higher in resource-poor settings and developing -countries such as Uganda. Even though most health facilities in Uganda including government health facilities have put in place several measures including diagnostic methods for H. pylori, there is still a rise in the prevalence of H. pylori infection.

Aim

The study aimed to compare stool antigen test over urea breath test in detecting helicobacter pylori infection among patients attending Nsambya Hospital in Kampala district.

Methods

The study employed a cross-sectional design and a questionnaire guide to gather information from 375 individuals at the Outpatient department at Nsambya Hospital in Kampala district. These were selected using simple random sampling. 

Results

The study results indicate that the prevalence of H. pylori was 48.0% by UBT and that of SAT was 46.9%, with most of the positive cases being in females 30.4% for UBT and 29.6% for SAT. On comparing SAT with UBT, SAT had a sensitivity of 97.8% and a specificity of 99.5%.

Conclusion

In this study, UBT performance showed a slightly higher prevalence of detecting H. pylori infection compared to SAT thus UBT remains the gold standard method in diagnosing H. pylori infection. In addition, UBT also detects H. pylori bacteria in low parasitemia.

Recommendations

The SAT, which detects present but not previous infection of H. pylori would be applicable in mass survey.UBT should be done for every patient suspected of having H. pylori infection with negative SAT in order not to miss out on people with the disease as it remains the gold standard for H. P diagnosis. The Health authorities and other stakeholders should encourage using UBT on all patients suspected of having H. pylori infection.