August 2019—Antibiotic treatment of sepsis patients often has to rely on clinical observation and educated guesswork as clinicians wait for a culture to determine whether the infection is bacterial, viral, or possibly fungal.
Read More »Tag Archives: Screening tests (See also Prenatal screening, Diagnostic assays/markers/tests/test kits)
Genetics lands in primary care inboxes
June 2019—It took David Ledbetter, PhD, a mere six years or so to become a hero. Dr. Ledbetter, executive vice president and chief scientific officer, Geisinger, had helped oversee the expansion of the health system’s MyCode precision medicine project, which began as a traditional research biobank in 2007.
Read More »ME multiplex panel: debating the tradeoffs
June 2019—Meningitis and encephalitis have been called by some the most terrifying diseases in medicine, in part because of the difficulty of diagnosing their underlying pathology. The clinical stakes of laboratory testing are high for diagnosing and treating the inflammation that meningitis/encephalitis (ME) causes within the central nervous system.
Read More »Earlier HIV detection with prototype Abbott assay
June 2019—Abbott unveiled a new and improved fourth-generation prototype HIV assay at the 2019 HIV Diagnostics Conference in March. In an Abbott-funded study, the prototype assay was compared with the fourth-generation Abbott Architect HIV Ag/Ab Combo and Roche Elecsys HIV Combi PT run on the Cobas e602.
Read More »Bladder cancer detection and surveillance: How urine cell-free DNA stacks up against cytology
June 2019—A high-throughput sequencing panel was found to be more than 90 percent sensitive in detecting urinary tumor DNA in early-stage bladder cancer and in post-treatment surveillance. The approach, reported in April in Cancer Discovery, overcomes some of the challenges urinary cell-free DNA analysis poses, said one of its developers, and is far more sensitive than cytology and cystoscopy.
Read More »Thyroid during pregnancy: how it changes, how to test
October 2018—How pregnancy affects normal thyroid function and thyroid function tests, and screening for thyroid disease during pregnancy, were the focus of a session at this year’s AACC annual meeting.
Read More »Forward march on commercial NAAT for M. genitalium
September 2018—About five years ago, when William M. Geisler, MD, MPH, was still focusing his research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on chlamydia, Mycoplasma genitalium carried a lower profile as a cause of sexually transmitted infection.
Read More »Urine drug testing debate: How best to test compliance and manage opioid crisis
September 2018—Qualitative or quantitative testing. Hydrolyze or don’t hydrolyze. Use or don’t use standard cutoffs. These and other decisions in toxicology testing have taken on new urgency amid the opioid crisis, which is driving laboratories to change test methods to assess prescription drug compliance and illicit drug use.
Read More »Next step? The switch from stool culture to PCR
September 2018—The advantages of moving from stool culture to a molecular platform are many: faster time to results, more accurate pathogen identification, a savings of space and staff time. For Jose Alexander, MD, D(ABMM), SM, MB(ASCP), and colleagues at Florida Hospital Orlando, another plus is being able to adhere to the Infectious Diseases Society of America guideline suggestion that labs use a diagnostic approach that can distinguish O157 from non-O157 E. coli and Shiga toxin 1 from Shiga toxin 2 E. coli.
Read More »New molecular road map for CRC
April 2017—Molecular testing for colorectal cancer is not for the faint of heart. While that’s not news to Stan Hamilton, MD—he’s head, Division of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the Frederick F. Becker distinguished chair in cancer research, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center—he was reminded of this fact recently when a friend looked at the multipage molecular pathology report on his own tumor.
Read More »Flexible ordering may unravel pay snags for respiratory panels
October 2015—The advantages of molecular respiratory viral panelsare accompanied by a challenge for laboratories that find it difficult to secure payment for testing that can cost hundreds of dollars, depending on the number of pathogens involved.
Read More »For now, first still last in primary HPV testing
October 2015—Not long after the FDA approved a primary HPV screening algorithm for women age 25 and older, in April 2014, things began to stir on the Western front—specifically, in Bellingham, Wash., where Northwest Pathology is based. “We started offering it pretty much right after the FDA approved it,” says Ryan Fortna, MD, PhD, director of molecular pathology at the regional, independent anatomic pathology group.
Read More »A laboratory on the trail of troubling TSH results
September 2014—It would be a nightmare for any laboratory professional: a misdiagnosed and mistreated patient owing to an aberrant test result. Julia C. Drees, PhD, a scientific director for chemistry at TPMG Regional Reference Laboratory, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, found herself facing that situation two years ago. She and colleague Judy Stone, PhD, then a Kaiser scientific director who is now at UCSD, discovered that faulty TSH results from their laboratory had led to multiple patients being misdiagnosed, and some even treated inappropriately.
Read More »Study: primary HPV test ‘merits consideration’
September 2014—With the FDA having approved use of the Roche Cobas assay for human papillomavirus as a primary standalone screen for cervical cancer in women 25 and older, expert panels are faced with the challenge of working the algorithm into current best practice recommendations for cervical cancer screening.
Read More »Algorithm for HIV testing detects more cases, more quickly
December 2013—Screening to detect HIV infection is poised to make a leap into the 21st century. In his presentations on the proposed new screening algorithm, Bernard M. Branson, MD, points out that in 1989, when the now outmoded algorithm was recommended, the telephone booth was a common sight and the “portable” computer was the size of a small suitcase. Dr. Branson, associate director for laboratory diagnostics in the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also points out that 1989 was the year of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre.
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