Clinical Chemistry Podcast

Pregnant women identified as high risk based on the prenatal screen can then undergo invasive procedures such as amniocentesis to confirm the diagnosis. Unfortunately, a large number of women with unaffected pregnancies undergo invasive procedures, putting the fetus at unnecessary risk for miscarriage.

Maintaining long-term stability of analytical procedures is an important undertaking for clinical laboratories. This process typically includes comparison of current and new reagent lots through paired measurement of patient and control samples, with defined criteria for acceptance and rejection of the new lot.

Personalized medicine implies that an individual's unique genetic makeup provides key information to guide prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. It's highly probable that no one besides yourself has ever been born or ever will be again with your precise DNA sequence, unless you are an identical twin and even then maybe not.

The US Food and Drug Administration has long maintained its right to regulate LDTs; however until recently they've chosen to exercise discretion and have left this to the individual laboratories and other regulatory agencies. This is now in a state of change, and the FDA has stated that it would issue guidance on its oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests.

The US Food and Drug Administration has long maintained its right to regulate LDTs; however until recently they've chosen to exercise discretion and have left this to the individual laboratories and other regulatory agencies. This is now in a state of change, and the FDA has stated that it would issue guidance on its oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests.

The US Food and Drug Administration has long maintained its right to regulate LDTs; however until recently they've chosen to exercise discretion and have left this to the individual laboratories and other regulatory agencies. This is now in a state of change, and the FDA has stated that it would issue guidance on its oversight of Laboratory Developed Tests.

Prenatal development involves a series of highly-organized genetic and epigenetic events. Abnormalities in the epigenetic control of developmental processes have been implicated in infertility, spontaneous abortion, intra-uterine growth abnormalities, and numerous post-natal consequences.

Human growth hormone is an important peptide hormone that stimulates growth, cell reproduction, and cell regeneration. Measuring growth hormone in the blood is an important clinical assay, but may be problematic due to heterogeneity of the hormone that may arise from alternative splicing, different post-translational or modifications, oligomerization, formation of complexes, and proteolytic proces...

The collection and transport of dried blood spots has facilitated population screening of newborns worldwide. In the July 2013 issue of Clinical Chemistry, researchers from the Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health in Albany described a convenient technique to extract DNA from these dried blood spots to further expand screening to nucleic acid testing.

Alzheimer's disease is a complex progressive neurodegenerative disease leading to loss of memory and cognitive function, and pathologically characterized by amyloid plaques and tangles that are formed largely by fibular forms of beta-amyloid and hyper-phosphorylated tau proteins. During the past two decades, cumulative molecular and clinical studies have provided the basis for our understanding of...

Measurement of serum thyroglobulin may be complicated by the presence of endogenous anti-thyroglobulin auto-antibodies which have the potential to interfere with immunoassays and cause false negative results.

Approximately 1 million metal-on-metal hip prostheses have been implanted worldwide to alleviate pain, restore hip function and improve overall quality of life.

Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, a key cardiovascular biomarker is recommended by National Cholesterol Education Program, Adult Treatment Panel Guidelines, for assessing cardiovascular disease risk and for monitoring lipid-lowering therapy; however, some workers believe that the number of circulating LDL particles rather than LDL cholesterol is a strong indicator of future cardiovascular disea...

Readmissions after hospitalization for heart failure are an increasingly important problem, with a significant number of patients being re-hospitalized within 30 days of discharge.

Chemicals in tobacco smoke may influence vitamin D metabolism and function, and vitamin D itself may modify the carcinogenity of tobacco smoke.

A paper in the May 2013 issue of Clinical Chemistry found that circulating microRNAs were deregulated in severe obesity, and the lead author of that study Dr. Francisco José Ortega from Spain joined us earlier for a separate podcast. That paper was accompanied by an editorial addressing the relevance of circulating microRNAs in plasma. The lead author of that commentary, Dr. Catriona Hilton from t...

Recently there has been a large amount of attention on a novel human influenza A virus, the H7N9 strain, that as of May 2013, has so far sickened over 131 people and killed 31 in the People's Republic of China. Because of the potential for pandemic spread, there is a great need for rapid and accurate test for the detection of the virus.

Genomics has the potential to provide important insights into the pathogenesis of obesity. A paper in the May 2013 issue of Clinical Chemistry found that circulating microRNAs were deregulated in severe obesity.

enomic research has been widely expected to transform medicine, but progress is not as rapid as some have expected. In the April 2013 issue of Clinical Chemistry, Ramy Arnaout and his colleagues published a paper regarding the cost and the pace of advances in pharmacogenomics.

Obesity, metabolic syndrome, and diabetes are major public health challenges. Recently, interest has surged regarding the possible role of intestinal microbes as potential contributors to the increased prevalence of these three disorders.