Clinical Chemistry Podcast

Patient-Based Real-Time Quality Control: Review and Recommendations 03.08.2019 16:09 ↓

Analyzing quality control specimens is a daily component of modern medical laboratories to help assure that correct results are reported for patient samples.  That involves periodic analysis of materials with a known analyte concentration and estimating if measurement error is within acceptable criteria.  The QC samples may be obtained commercially or prepared within the laboratory.  However, how...

The National Glycohemoglobin Standardization Program: Over 20 Years of Improving Hemoglobin A1c Measurement 02.08.2019 11:41 ↓

Measurement of hemoglobin A1c in blood is essential for the management of patients with diabetes mellitus.  Hemoglobin A1c reflects the average blood glucose concentration over the proceeding 8 to 12 weeks.  While the clinical value of hemoglobin A1c was initially limited by large differences in results among various methods, the investment of considerable effort to implement standardization has b...

Noninvasive Detection of Bladder Cancer by Shallow-Depth Genome-Wide Bisulfite Sequencing of Urinary Cell-Free DNA for Methylation and Copy Number Profiling 02.08.2019 10:12 ↓

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer worldwide.  The current diagnosis and monitoring of bladder cancer is still heavily reliant on cystoscopy, an invasive procedure where the tumor is directly visualized.  However, a paper appearing in the July 2019 issue of Clinical Chemistry from Dr. Dennis Lo's laboratory in Hong Kong reports that bladder cancer can be detected noninvasively in urina...