Lab Rat or Button Monkey?

I saw a worrying story on the BBC health site today. It concerns chlamydia screening in the UK.   It seems the story is based on some research which can be found here.  A provional PDF of the research can be found here (Note this link may break in the future).  As the BBC article points out, chlamydia [...]

I am currently working on a series of lectures for the Medical Laboratory Assistants in our laboratory.  The lecture series is designed  to provide some background for the MLA on the various tests we perform and hopefully help them to understand some the clinical details they might see to help them in test requesting. Xanthochromia [...]

This is an interesting use of maggots.  I have heard of the use of maggots at removing dead tissue etc but to collect the secretions to use as a potential antibiotic is an interesting proposition.

The laboratory I work in has recently seen a very unusual potassium result. During the afternoon, one of our consultants came across a high potassium result, 13.4, that he suspected might be an EDTA contaminated sample.

This article appeared on the BBC website. As an expectant father, I gave it a read and found it quite interesting. It seems remarkable that such a small thing can profoundly influence the decision process.

Found this article on the BBC website.   It seems that the test detects salivary urate.  I know the BBC is aimed at a very technical audience but I would have expected a bit more critical viewing of the technology.  Surely gout would also give rise to high salivary urate levels and gout is a common [...]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/91a88fe6-c92b-11db-9f7b-000b5df10621.html

This appears to be a good site for some very basic knowledge http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/

Newborn screening is to include MCADD in 2008 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6339147.stm Extra information about MCADD can be found here , here and here. Information about newborn screening can be found here.

This looks like I might need to read it: http://www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/14/30/10/04143010.pdf.