Newborn screening by tandem mass spectrometry confirms the high prevalence of sickle cell disease among German newborns

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a severe inherited blood disorder associated with significant morbidity and mortality in early childhood. Since simple interventions are available to prevent early fatal courses, SCD is a target condition of several national newborn screening (NBS) programs worldwide, but not in Germany. Traditionally, the diagnosis of SCD is made by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), isoelectric focusing (IEF), or capillary electrophoresis (CE), but globally, most NBS programs in place are based on tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Recently, several publications have shown that MS/MS is an appropriate screening technique to detect hemoglobin patterns suggestive of SCD in newborns, too. We have studied dried blood spot samples of 29,079 German newborns by both CE and MS/MS and observed a 100% congruence of test results. Seven babies had hemoglobin patterns characteristic of SCD (1:4154). Our study confirms that (a) the suitability of MS/MS as an adequate substitute for CE in NBS for SCD and (b) the high prevalence of SCD among German newborns. Our results support the thesis that German newborns should be screened for SCD by MS/MS.