The impact of discussing preoperative fasting with patients.

Patients awaiting surgery are often fasted preoperatively well in excess of the recommended fasting times. Educated perioperative practitioners were asked to discuss preoperative starvation with patients. Preoperative starvation period for clear fluids was significantly reduced from a mean of 8 hours 30 minutes in the original audit, to 6 hours 10 minutes in this study of 113 patients (p < 0.

Validating a custom multiplex ELISA against individual commercial immunoassays using clinical samples.

The measurement of multiple antigens in a single sample poses clinical and methodological challenges. Here we describe the validation of a multiplexed sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) array (microELISA) of nine antigens. The antigens tested simultaneously were: alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), prostate specific antigen (PSA), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cancer antigen 125 (CA 125), CA 15-3, CA 19-9, beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (beta-hCG), luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle stimulating hormone (FSH).

Enhanced proliferation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in a plasma-derived cell culture fluid.

The proliferation and activation of murine and human T-lymphocytes in a high-protein lymphocyte culture fluid (LCF) is compared to that of cells cultured in 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS). Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) proliferate exponentially in the LCF for up to 46 days and generate cell numbers that are nearly 100,000-fold greater than cells cultured in FBS. This rapid growth of T cells in LCF could have an important impact in adoptive immunotherapy and gene therapy since cell growth is a limiting factor in these technologies.

A control for fetal bovine serum.

The FBS Control is designed to assist cell culture scientists who have been frustrated with lack of consistency in FBS lots. Continued use will reduce the time and expense needed in classical lot selection methods.