Clinical Chemistry Podcast RSS

This is the January 2014 special Women's Health issue of Clinical Chemistry, Volume 60, Issue 1.

Gestational diabetes mellitus is becoming more common as the epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes continues. Newly proposed diagnostic criteria will, if adopted universally, further increase the prevalence of this condition.

In making the diagnosis of diabetes, there are several advantages using determinations of hemoglobin A1c rather than glucose measurements. These include the pre-analytics stability of hemoglobin A1c in the sample, a low within-subject biological variation, as well as being free from the dietary restrictions associated with measuring glucose.

In this new generation of PCR technology, droplet microfluidic systems are used to create and analyze nanoliter to picoliter droplets, which enables simple digital PCR workflows that yield highly sensitive mutation detection within complex DNA mixtures.

Cell free DNA from transplanted organs in the circulation of transplant recipients is a potential biomarker of rejection. But most of these methods entail high costs, long turnaround times and the need for donor DNA.

Multiplex digital PCR can be used for the sensitive detection of circulating tumor DNA with performance unachievable by other current molecular detection approaches.

The elevation in the concentrations of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in blood after prostatectomy is the only available marker from monitoring relapse after surgery. This increase in PSA is sometimes called biochemical failure or biochemical relapse. PSA monitoring, however, cannot predict relapse at the time of surgery.

On the cover this month: Francis Crick's original sketch of the structure of DNA. Drawn on a scrap of A4 paper, this image provided the first look at the doublehelix structure of DNA. It is important to remember that 60 years ago there were no software programs for drawing structures, and neither Francis Crick nor James Watson had any artistic talent. Francis Crick asked his wife Odile, an accomplished artist, to abandon her painting and illustrate her husband's work. It was Odile's exquisite and iconic drawing of the double helix that was included in their 1953 research study that was submitted to Nature. Not only that, it was James Watson's sister Betty who typed the historic paper. It makes one wonder how Crick and Watson would have fared without the help of two women, Odile Crick and Betty Watson. Skipping ahead 60 years, this month's issue of Clinical Chemistry contains what we believe is an important research study and accompanying editorial describing maternal plasma DNA bisulfite sequencing for noninvasive prenatal testing.

New diagnostics technologies such as microarrays, next generation, or massively parallel sequencing, are generating an unprecedented amount of data. This requires a sophisticated knowledge of bioinformatics for proper storage, analysis, and mining of these very large data sets.

The application of Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization–Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry or MALDI-TOF MS, to microbial identification is revolutionizing clinical microbiology, providing rapid identification with minimal sample preparation and potential cost savings.

And our guest today is Dr. Nader Rifai, Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Chemistry and Chair of the Clinical Chemistry Trainee Council, to announce the launch of a new program from AACC's Clinical Chemistry Trainee Council, the Question Bank. And Dr. Rifai, why was the Question Bank created?

The discovery phase of proteomics is critical in the identification of suitable markers for exploration and validation of promising new clinical tests. But can laboratories be certain if what they believe they are measuring is, in fact, what they actually measuring?

This is the October 2013 issue of Clinical Chemistry: Volume 59, Issue 10.

The analysis of circulating cell-free tumor DNA has considerable potential for the detention and monitoring of cancers. Substantial effort has been made to identify cancer associated genetic changes that might be suitable for use as new tumor markers. However, only a few of these genetic markers have been translated into clinical use.

The clinical microbiology laboratory is sometimes considered low-tech, particularly when compared to the high degree of automation found in the clinical chemistry laboratory. However, systems are emerging for the clinical microbiology laboratory with the potential to automate almost all areas of testing, including inoculation of primary culture plates, detection of growth on culture media, susceptibility testing, and extraction and detection of nucleic acids from clinical specimens.