Improved Sample Quality and Decreased Turnaround Time When Using Plasma Blood Collection Tubes with a Mechanical Separator in a Large University Hospital.

Background: Serum is commonly used for clinical chemistry testing but many conditions can affect the clotting process, leading to poor sample quality and impaired workflow. With serum gel tubes, we found a high proportion of sample probe aspiration errors on our Beckman AU5800 analyzers. We decided to implement the BD Barricor™ plasma tubes, and we validated an off-specification centrifugation scheme and verified that results obtained for 65 chemistry and immunochemistry tests were comparable to those obtained in serum gel tubes.

Correlation of cord blood pH, base excess, and lactate concentration measured with a portable device for identifying fetal acidosis.

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of portable lactate analyzers in identifying fetal acidosis by correlating arterial and venous lactate values from umbilical cord blood with lactate, pH, and base excess measurements from central laboratory analyzers.

Methods: We performed a prospective study using arterial and venous cord blood from 52 women with a singleton fetus delivered at term. We evaluated the correlation between the cord blood lactate concentration measured using two of the same portable devices (Lactate Plus, Nova Biomedical) with the result from a central laboratory analyzer.

Clinical features of cytotoxic CD8+ T-lymphocyte deficiency in chronic rhinosinusitis patients: a demographic and functional study.

Background: Identification of Staphylococcus aureus intracellularly in chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) suggests an underlying cellular immunodeficiency. Supporting this, we have previously reported low CD8+ (cytotoxic) T-lymphocyte levels in a subpopulation of CRS patients and identified polymorphisms in the CD8A gene associated with CRS. In order to better understand the role of low CD8+ in CRS, we wished to determine the phenotype for CRS/Low CD8+ in comparison to that of conventional CRS.

A convergence of rRNA and mRNA quality control pathways revealed by mechanistic analysis of nonfunctional rRNA decay.

Eukaryotes possess numerous quality control systems that monitor both the synthesis of RNA and the integrity of the finished products. We previously demonstrated that Saccharomyces cerevisiae possesses a quality control mechanism, nonfunctional rRNA decay (NRD), capable of detecting and eliminating translationally defective rRNAs. Here we show that NRD can be divided into two mechanistically distinct pathways: one that eliminates rRNAs with deleterious mutations in the decoding site (18S NRD) and one that eliminates rRNAs containing deleterious mutations in the peptidyl transferase center (25S NRD).

Quantitative PCR analysis of diepoxybutane and epihalohydrin damage to nuclear versus mitochondrial DNA.

The bifunctional alkylating agents diepoxybutane (DEB) and epichlorohydrin (ECH) are linked to the elevated incidence of certain cancers among workers in the synthetic polymer industry. Both compounds form interstrand cross-links within duplex DNA, an activity suggested to contribute to their cytotoxicity. To assess the DNA targeting of these compounds in vivo, we assayed for damage within chicken erythro-progenitor cells at three different sites: one within mitochondrial DNA, one within expressed nuclear DNA, and one within unexpressed nuclear DNA.