Two novel antithetical KN blood group antigens may contribute to more than a quarter of all KN antisera in Europe.

Background: All antigens described in the KN blood group system are located in the long homologous repeat D (LHR-D) of complement receptor 1 (CR1). While there have been reports that some sera react only with the long homologous repeat C (LHR-C), the antigens in LHR-C are unknown.

Study Design And Methods: Recombinant LHR-C and LHR-D were used to identify antibodies directed against LHR-C of CR1, into which a point mutation was introduced to characterize the underlying blood group antigens.

The panacea statistical toolbox of a biomedical peer reviewer.

The main role of a peer reviewer is to make judgments on the research articles by asking a number of questions to evaluate the quality of the research article. Statistics is a major part of any biomedical research article, and most reviewers gain their experiences in manuscript reviewing by undertaking it but not through an educational process. Therefore, reviewers of the biomedical journals normally do not have enough knowledge and skills to evaluate the validity of statistical methods used in biomedical research articles submitted for consideration.

The panacea toolbox of a PhD biomedical student.

Doing a PhD (doctor of philosophy) for the sake of contribution to knowledge should give the student an immense enthusiasm through the PhD period. It is the time in one's life that one spends to "hit the nail on the head" in a specific area and topic of interest. A PhD consists mostly of hard work and tenacity; however, luck and genius might also play a little role.

Secreted β3-integrin enhances natural killer cell activity against acute myeloid leukemia cells.

Integrins are a large family of heterodimeric proteins that are involved in cell adhesion, migration, and proliferation. Integrin diversity and function is regulated by alternative splicing. Membrane-bound and truncated β3-integrins were shown to be key players in cancer metastasis.

Medical literature review: Search or perish.

Literature review is a cascading process of searching, reading, analyzing, and summing up of the materials about a specific topic. However, searching the literature is like searching "a needle in a haystack", and hence has been called "Cinderella".(1) Therefore, skills and effective pathways of searching the literature are needed to achieve high sensitive and specific results.

Development of a single-antigen magnetic bead assay (SAMBA) for the sensitive detection of HPA-1a alloantibodies using tag-engineered recombinant soluble β3 integrin.

Timely and accurate testing for human platelet antigen 1a (HPA-1a) alloantibodies is vital for clinical diagnosis of neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia (NAIT). Current antigen-specific assays used for the detection of HPA-1 alloantibodies are technically very complex and cumbersome for most diagnostic laboratories. Hence, we designed and applied recombinant soluble (rs) β3 integrins displaying HPA-1a or HPA-1b epitopes for the development of a single-antigen magnetic bead assay (SAMBA).

Quality Indicators in Laboratory Medicine: from theory to practice. Preliminary data from the IFCC Working Group Project "Laboratory Errors and Patient Safety".

Background: The adoption of Quality Indicators (QIs) has prompted the development of tools to measure and evaluate the quality and effectiveness of laboratory testing, first in the hospital setting and subsequently in ambulatory and other care settings. While Laboratory Medicine has an important role in the delivery of high-quality care, no consensus exists as yet on the use of QIs focussing on all steps of the laboratory total testing process (TTP), and further research in this area is required.

Methods: In order to reduce errors in laboratory testing, the IFCC Working Group on "Laboratory Errors and Patient Safety" (WG-LEPS) developed a series of Quality Indicators, specifically designed for clinical laboratories.