Read the latest articles about CLSI and laboratory standards in the official CLSI Blog. Browse our most recent blog articles below.
September is National Preparedness Month, reminding us that it’s a great time to think about implementing a laboratory safety plan, or updating your lab’s current disaster plan. With the theme of “Prepared, Not Scared,” the US government has provided a free toolkit with useful items for reuse on social media platforms, including hashtags, graphics, videos, and other helpful related links.
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Dr. Mona El-Shokry, an Associate Professor from the faculty of medicine at Ain Shams University in Egypt, shared with us how a group of labs in Egypt, by implementing CLSI’s M100, was able to improve the quality of their antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) for the purpose of reporting microbial identification and antimicrobial susceptibility data to Egypt’s national surveillance system.
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Phenylketonuria, also called PKU, is a rare inherited disorder that causes an amino acid called phenylalanine to build up in the body. PKU is caused by a defect in the gene that helps create the enzyme needed to break down phenylalanine.
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Thank you to everyone who attended AACC 2019 and stopped by to visit us at the CLSI booth or at our Member Open House, which provided an opportunity for new, current, and potential CLSI members to network and meet CLSI staff.
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Many new antimicrobials have recently come to market to address the rising threat of multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. Clinical and public health laboratories are critical participants in the management of patients with MDR infections and must develop a plan for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) of these new agents, either in-house or at a reference laboratory.
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Implementing a quality management system in the laboratory can help ensure customer satisfaction, satisfy regulatory requirements, and create more efficient processes. A QMS provides a set of essential building blocks that help the lab fulfill predetermined quality objectives. A QMS manages the interacting processes and resources needed to provide value and realize results for laboratory customers and users.
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August is National Immunization Awareness Month. Health care workers play an important role in educating parents about the importance of vaccination for their infants and older children. Unfortunately, patients with certain conditions are unable to receive some or all vaccinations, leaving them vulnerable to many communicable diseases, such as measles and whooping cough. Patients who are unable to receive vaccines for medical reasons rely on the rest of us to keep our vaccinations updated to protect us against diseases that we can pass on to the unvaccinated. This is called community or herd immunity.
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Infections caused by isolates of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae that are resistant to nearly all available antimicrobial agents are difficult to treat and a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. In contrast to serine carbapenemase (eg, KPC)- producers, isolates of Enterobacteriaceae that produce metallo-β-lactamases (MBL) are the most challenging, as these are resistant to meropenem-vaborbactam and ceftazidime-avibactam, the newest beta-lactam combination agents. However, isolates of Enterobacteriaceae with MBLs (eg, NDM, VIM, and IMP) have been shown to be susceptible to a combination of ceftazidime + avibactam + aztreonam.
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Each year millions of newborns are born prematurely, of low birth weight or with serious birth defects. The effects of these conditions, and the treatments these newborns receive greatly complicate the ability to obtain reliable and timely newborn screening results for the dozens of diseases screened.
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The 71st AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo will take place in Anaheim, California at the Anaheim Marriott from August 4th through the 8th. The 71st AACC Annual Scientific Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo “showcases the cutting edge science and technology shaping the future of laboratory medicine.” The conference will be hosting over 300 exciting scientific and educational sessions to keep you informed about advances in laboratory medicine technology.
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