WORLD’S CLINICAL LABORATORY NEWS LEADER ISSN 1068-1760
I
N
Vol. 38 No.7 • 11/2020
T
E
Blood Test Foresees Psychotic Disorders
A
round a quarter of young people who display mild, transitory psychotic symptoms at an early age ultimately go on to develop a serious psychotic disorder. Schizophrenia, for example, is generally not clinically diagnosed until a person reaches their twenties.
Cont’d on page 16
A
R
N
A
T
I
O
Scoring System Predicts Severity of Infections in COVID-19 Patients
newly devised scoring system was designed to help doctors identify COVID-19 patients more likely to develop severe infections with potentially life-threatening complications. Investigators at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (Dub-
lin, Ireland) evaluated the relationship between the ratio of interleukin (IL)-6 to IL-10 and subsequent clinical outcome in 80 patients hospitalized for COVID-19. They used their findings to create a simple five-point linear score predictor of clinical outcome, the
International Consortium to Standardize COVID -19 Tests
Cont’d on page 18
See article on page 14
I
S
I
T
lINkXPReSS COM
R E A D E R
S E R V I C E
®
P O R T A L
Renew /Start your Free Subscription
access Interactive Digital Magazine
Instant Online Product Information:
Identify linkXpress codes of 1 interest as you read magazine ®
on linkXpress.com 2 toClick reach reader service portal
code(s) of interest on 3 Mark linkXpress inquiry matrix ®
If your subscription is not renewed every 12 months your Free Subscription may be automatically discontinued
DaIly ClINICal laB NeWS
N
A
®
L
Predicting Pre-Term Births in High-Risk Women
G
lobally, preterm birth is the leading cause of death in children under 5 years with 15 million babies being born before 37 weeks’ gestation each year. Spontaneous preterm birth is a syndrome, which can be precipitated by a variety of factors. The association between bacterial vaginosis (BV) detected using laboratory techniques and preterm labor has been recognized for
Cont’d on page 22
I
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) have entered into a collaboration with Siemens Healthineers toward developing a novel process for standardizing SARS-CoV-2 assays, thereby enabling all test manufacturers to develop analytically comparable tests based on common frames of reference. LabMedica’s COVID-19 Diagnostics Update section starts on page 4.
V
V I S I T
Instant Breath Test Detects COVID-19
nitial findings from a new study have shown how COVID-19 can be detected via a non-invasive breath test by identifying candidate biomarkers, providing almost instant results. The new study was conducted by Loughborough University (Leicestershire, UK; www.lboro.ac. uk) which is part of a consortium’s research team that has been able to identify candidate biomarkers present in the breath
World's Fastest PCR-Based COVID -19 Test Introduced
A
rapid new coronavirus test, which provides results for COVID-19 in just 39 minutes, is now available on the Vivalytic, a point of care platform brought to market by Randox Laboratories and Bosch Healthcare. The test for detection of the SARS-CoV-2
U
Cont’d on page 14
COVID -19 Mass Screening Method Could Be Much Cheaper than Individual Testing
sing a new mathematical approach to screen large groups for COVID-19 could be around 20 times cheaper than individual testing, suggests a study by researchers at The University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, UK; www. ed.ac.uk).
Applying a recently created algorithm to test multiple samples in one go reduces the total number of tests needed, lowering the cost of screening large populations for COVID-19, according to the researchers. This novel approach will make it easier to spot Cont’d on page 14
Cont’d on page 20
INSIDE
COVID -19 Update . . . . . 4 Clinical News . . . . . . . . . 8 IFCC News . . . . . . . . . . 25 Product News . . . . 16-34 Events Calendar . . 46-47
PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH
International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine
GlOBeTeCH >>> MeDIa <<<