Children in El Salvador Tested for Lead Poisoning

Children in Regalo de Dios, a small urban community of 240 families in the city of Soyapango, El Salvador, were tested for lead poisoning and anemia.

The LeadCare II system makes lead testing easy, delivering quantitative blood-lead results with only two drops of blood in just three minutes. Far simpler to administer than traditional blood-lead tests, the device can be used with capillary or venous sample, can be combined with other routine waived blood tests, and saves administrative time spent on paper work, tracking, and follow-up.

Regular blood-lead screening tests are important for young children because elevated lead levels are connected to a host of learning and social problems--from reading difficulties and attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to increased risk of violence and drop-outs. Recent studies even suggest that some of the mental decline associated with aging--for example, losses in verbal and visual memory and language ability--may relate to lead exposure earlier in life.

To help assess the problem of lead poisoning among Salvadoran children, ESA Biosciences (Chelmsford, MA, USA), a Magellan Biosciences company and manufacturer of systems to test for lead poisoning in children, donated its LeadCare system test kits to the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA) for use in its Children's Health International Medicine Project of Seattle (CHIMPS).

According to Dr. Erica Freeman, a pediatric resident at the University of Washington and one of the project leaders, "The CHIMPS team tested 55 children [in September 2007], ages one to five years, for blood-lead levels, hemoglobin, and zinc potassium phosphate hexahydrate (ZPPH)--a sensitive diagnostic indicator for iron deficiency anemia. In most cases, we were able to perform all three tests using capillary blood samples drawn from a single lancet puncture. Six children, or 11% of those tested, had elevated lead levels greater than 10 µg/dl (ranging from 10.5-20.2 µg/dl). For families of children with elevated lead levels, we provided additional counseling around decreasing environmental lead exposure, and in one case, we also made a home visit.”

More than 100 community members attended the health education events held in the community center at the end of the week of testing. ESA donated additional LeadCare reagent kits for use at the Benjamin Bloom Children's Hospital in San Salvador (San Salvador, El Salvador), one of only two tertiary care centers for children in Central America.

Dr. Freeman added, "A team member returned to Regalo de Dios in January [2008] to perform follow-up testing on the children identified with elevated blood-lead levels the previous September. All of their levels had dropped to less than 10 µg/dl, below the toxic threshold, according to World Health Organization (WHO; Geneva, Switzerland) guidelines.

CHIMPS presented the project results at the Academic Pediatric Association Conference held in March 2008 in Los Angeles (CA, USA).


Related Links:
ESA Biosciences
University of Washington
World Health Organization