An examination of the usefulness of repeat testing practices in a large hospital clinical chemistry laboratory.

A long-standing practice in clinical laboratories has been to automatically repeat laboratory tests when values trigger automated "repeat rules" in the laboratory information system such as a critical test result. We examined 25,553 repeated laboratory values for 30 common chemistry tests from December 1, 2010, to February 28, 2011, to determine whether this practice is necessary and whether it may be possible to reduce repeat testing to improve efficiency and turnaround time for reporting critical values. An "error" was defined to occur when the difference between the initial and verified values exceeded the College of American Pathologists/Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments allowable error limit.

A rare case of intravascular large T-cell lymphoma with an unusual T helper phenotype.

Although most cases of intravascular large cell lymphoma exhibit a B-cell phenotype, less than 50 cases in the literature describe a T-cell or natural killer cell phenotype and, of these, the majority are CD3+, CD4-, CD5-, CD30-, CD56+, TIA-1+, and EBER+. We present a case of a rare intravascular large T-cell lymphoma in a 59-year-old man with an unusual CD3+, CD4+, CD5-, CD30+, CD56-, TIA-1-negative and EBER-negative phenotype. This T helper or CD30 phenotype is particularly uncommon.

Impact of age, gender, and race on circulating γδ T cells.

A major subset of human peripheral blood γδ T cells expresses the Vγ2Vδ2 T cell receptor and responds to malignant or infectious diseases. We noted significant differences in the numbers of Vγ2Vδ2 T cells in blood samples from healthy Caucasian CA or African American (AA) donors. On average, CA donors had 3.

Vaccinia virus inhibits T cell receptor-dependent responses by human gammadelta T cells.

Vaccinia virus (VV) is an effective vaccine and vector but has evolved multiple mechanisms for evading host immunity. We characterized the interactions of VV (TianTan and New York City Board of Health strains) with human gammadelta T cells because of the role they play in immune control of this virus. Exposure to VV failed to trigger proliferative responses in gammadelta T cells from unprimed individuals, but it was an unexpected finding that VV blocked responses to model antigens by the Vgamma2Vdelta2 T cell subset.

Gamma interferon secretion by human Vgamma2Vdelta2 T cells after stimulation with antibody against the T-cell receptor plus the Toll-Like receptor 2 agonist Pam3Cys.

Circulating Vgamma2Vdelta2 T-cell populations in healthy human beings are poised for rapid responses to bacterial or viral pathogens. We asked whether Vgamma2Vdelta2 T cells use the Toll-like receptor (TLR) family to recognize pathogen-associated molecular pattern molecules and to regulate cell functions. Analysis of expanded Vgamma2Vdelta2 T-cell lines showed the abundant presence of TLR2 mRNA, implying that these receptors are important for cell differentiation or function.

Forty-eight-week evaluation of lopinavir/ritonavir, a new protease inhibitor, in human immunodeficiency virus-infected children.

Background: Lopinavir/ritonavir has demonstrated antiviral activity in the HIV-infected adult.

Subjects: The objective of this study was to investigate a liquid coformulation of lopinavir/ritonavir, in combination with reverse transcriptase inhibitors, in HIV-infected children.

Methods: One hundred antiretroviral (ARV)-naive and ARV-experienced, nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-naive children between 6 months and 12 years of age participated in this Phase I/II, open label, multicenter trial.