Trivitron Healthcare is now focusing on its rapid and sensitive one step test for detection and screening of celiac disease (CD) to drive its future growth efforts. The current gold standard for the diagnosis of CD remains histologic confirmation of the intestinal damage in serologically positive individuals.

CD is a chronic systemic autoimmune disorder induced by ingestion of gluten contained in wheat, barley and rye and related cereals. It has extensive short and long-term negative health consequences if untreated, including vitamin deficiencies, autoimmune diseases, and possibly cancer.

In this regard, the company sees the need to create an awareness, encourage formation of CD support groups and registries to highlight early screening and diagnosis for patients to access immediate treatment for relief.

“We are the first company to provide a rapid diagnostic solution which is developed in Europe and CE certified. It can be used both by diagnostic labs and at home only because it needs a simple finger prick to draw the blood sample for accurate and reliable results within 10 minutes”, said Sameer D. Saral, director, Trivitron Healthcare.

Many companies provide diagnostics tests for Celiac Disease but are mainly on ELISA platforms, which is time consuming and require additional investments by labs in terms of hardware and qualified manpower. Keeping this in mind and owing to the need for rapid diagnosis and mass screening for CD Lab Systems Diagnostics, Finland, a Trivitron enterprise, developed this Immunochromatography platform. Its benefits are fast turnaround time, early disease detection in either outpatient settings or at home, he added.

The prevalence of CD is worldwide and is reported in Europe, Russia, Mediterranean countries, US, South America, South Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand which are high wheat consuming regions. However, CD is reported to be low or absent in Japan and South East Asia where rice is the main cereal consumed and in sub-Saharan Africa where maize is the staple diet.

In India, northern states have indicated high incidence as per a study done in Ludhiana which estimated its prevalence of 1 in 310 individuals. Most of the studies done in the north Indian population shows a prevalence that parallels other studies in the West. In southern India the rates were low primarily because of dietary patterns or differences in genetic make-up as CD  occurrence is determined by the HLA- DQ antigen expression pattern of the individual, said the company.