The tumor markers TPA, TPS, TPACYK and CYFRA 21-1 react differently with the keratins 8, 18 and 19.

The commercially available tumor marker tests TPA, TPS, TPACYK and CYFRA 21-1 react with simple epithelium keratins. From clinical studies it can be deduced that the pattern of keratin recognition must be different for each of these tests. We therefore studied the reactivity of the keratin fragment combinations K8/K18 and K8/K19 in the different tests and determined the reactivity of the corresponding soluble antibodies with purified keratin 8, 18 and 19 in immunoblots.

Cytokeratin 19 fragments: a new marker for non-small-cell lung cancer.

We developed a new and automated assay for the detection of lung cancer associated cytokeratin 19 fragments in patients' sera/plasma. This new tumour marker assay CYFRA 21-1 was evaluated in technical and clinical studies using the multibatch analysers ES 300 and ES 600 from Boehringer Mannheim GmbH. The analytical performance was shown to be excellent.

Evaluation of Diabur-Test 5000: a cooperative study carried out at 12 diabetes centers.

Diabur-Test 5000, a new test strip for urinary glucose, permits the accurate measurement of up to 5% glucose concentrations in urine. In a survey carried out at 12 diabetes centers in Europe, the new test strip was tested in laboratory trials and routine self-monitoring. There was good agreement between the test strip and the quantitative glucose determination on 4105 urine samples in the laboratory trials.

Evaluation of the Micur microdilution systems for antibiotic susceptibility testing of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria.

Two commercial systems for testing the antimicrobial susceptibility of bacteria were evaluated in a collaborative study at two sites using 306 freshly isolated clinical strains. Gram-negative bacteria were tested with the Micur RST 02 and gram-positive bacteria with the Micur RST 03, systems for MIC titration. For categorization of bacterial susceptibility into sensitive, intermediate or resistant, the Micur ST 02 and 03 were used for gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria respectively.