False-seronegative HCV infection motivated by interference with cryoglobulins.

Objectives: Cryoglobulins (CGs) are serum proteins that undergo a reverse cold-induced precipitation . The CGs are a well-known cause of analytical interferences in several laboratory tests, leading to spurious results. With this in view, we present a case of a patient initially misdiagnosed due to CGs interference in Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) serology.

Use of predictive tools in the management of COVID-19 patients: a key role of clinical laboratories.

Objectives: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is widely spreading and represents a critical threat to global health. In the fight against this pandemic, provincial hospitals urgently need rapid diagnostic of COVID-19 infected patients to avoid collapsing of emergency units. However, the high demand of patients with severe acute respiratory symptoms limits the fast delivery of results by the gold standard method reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction real time (rRT-PCR) for the identification of COVID-19 positive pneumonia.

New haematologic score to discriminate beta thalassemia trait from iron deficiency anaemia in a Spanish Mediterranean region.

Several studies have stablished discriminant formulas (DF) from red blood cell (RBC) data as simple, low time-consuming and inexpensive tools to differentiate β-thalassemia trait (β-TT) from iron deficiency anaemia (IDA). The aim of this work is to introduce new formulas and evaluate them in the differentiation of microcytic anaemia (MA) into either β-TT or IDA in the Mediterranean region of Tarragona. A total of 200 anonymized haematological determinations with MA were collected, 100 diagnosed of β-TT and 100 diagnosed of IDA.