Issue

C-reactive protein (CRP), a biomarker of inflammation, could have a new role involving antibiotic stewardship in patients with acute chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A British study found a noticeably lower incidence of antibiotic use in COPD patients measured for C-reactive protein (CRP) via finger prick test, in comparison with…

Three disease types—cancers, vascular events, and infections— account for nearly 75% of all misdiagnosis-related harms. Additionally, 15 subgroups of these diseases make up nearly 50% of high-severity cases. These statistics call for targeted improvements in diagnostic accuracy, according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who combed…

Preanalytical factors can negatively impact specimen quality and a laboratory’s ability to provide valid results, leading to potentially serious consequences for patients. These include over- or under dosing of medications, mismanaging or misdiagnosing cases, and even contributing to a patient’s death. AACC’s first conference on this topic, Optimizing Quality in…

In a breakthrough that offers new possibilities for mass spectrometry (MS) in clinical labs, researchers have developed a top-down “dilute and infuse” tandem MS (MS/MS) approach that identifies hemoglobin 7(Hb) variants and thalassemias, two common genetic disorders, within just 3 minutes for data acquisition. A study published in Clinical Chemistry…

Curious about the impact of changing guidelines on fetal lung maturity (FLM) tests, an FLM reference laboratory in Minnesota conducted a retrospective study and discovered very low test volumes among a series of FLM assays. Sharing their study results in Clinical Biochemistry the authors are recommending that clinical lab directors…

When it comes to reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels in patients age 75 or older, simvastatin perhaps shouldn’t be used alone. A study in JAMA Cardiology showed that a combination of ezetimibe (10 mg/d) and simvastatin (40 mg/d) yielded the best results in lowering LDL-C levels in this cohort…