Elsevier

Respiratory Medicine

Volume 103, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 335-341
Respiratory Medicine

Review
Detection of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency: A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rmed.2008.10.006Get rights and content
Under an Elsevier user license
open archive

Summary

Screening studies reveal a much larger number of individuals expected to have alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency than is clinically recognized, with estimates that only about 2–10% of such individuals have been diagnosed. In the context that recognition of alpha-1 antitrypsin may prompt specific interventions (e.g., smoking avoidance, testing of family members, genetic counseling, and consideration of augmentation therapy), diagnosis is important, inviting much attention for efforts to identify affected individuals.

Strategies to identify affected individuals include both population-based screening and targeted detection, and available studies have employed both approaches, though large-scale population-based screening is challenging. As reviewed in this paper, targeted-detection studies have generally produced a higher rate of detecting disease, and tend to be more successful with easier sampling techniques. Strategies to enhance detection in targeted studies have included awareness campaigns, easy testing techniques (such as evaluation of dried blood spots and home, confidential testing), and inclusive criteria for testing which span the full spectrum of clinical manifestations of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.

Keywords

Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency
Diagnosis
Genetic screening
Health promotion
Mass screening

Cited by (0)