Equivalence of drug efficacy of albendazole against hookworm infections measured by five diagnostic methods.

Mean intensity of infection corresponds with the mean fecal egg counts (FEC; expressed as eggs per gram of stool (EPG)) for a single (1x KK) and duplicate (2x KK) Kato-Katz, Mini-FLOTAC and FECPAKG2 and with the mean DNA concentration (expressed as genome equivalents per ml of DNA (GE/ml)) for qPCR. For hookworm, there is significant evidence that a diagnostic method results in equivalent drug efficacy results compared to a 1x KK when the 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) around the difference in drug efficacy does not include +/- 5%. Significant evidence of equal drug efficacy results is indicated by ‘*’. For hookworm, drug efficacy was classified as ‘satisfactory’ when drug efficacy ≥90%, reduced when drug efficacy was less than 80% or doubtful in all other cases.