Search results for " Laboratory"

Results of a survey produced by the Italian Society of Clinical Biochemestry (SIBioC) and the Italian Association of Hospital Pneumologists (AIPO) co…

2018

The aim of this paper is to present the preliminary results of a joint project by SIBioC-AIPO working group on “Body cavities fluids”. The main purpose of the working group is to achieve a harmonized and shared diagnostic pathway related to pleural fluid (PF) analysis. The multistep project begins with a state of the art analysis. A survey, sent to both laboratory medicine personnel and pneumologists, was conducted between October and December 2016. The questionnaire (21 questions) was made available through the web-based SurveyMonkey platform. Overall, 408 replies were collected, 40.4% from laboratory medicine specialists, 3.2% from laboratory technicians, 49.3% from pneumologists and 7.1%…

New insights into the gut microbiome in loggerhead sea turtles Caretta caretta stranded on the Mediterranean coast

2019

Caretta caretta is the most common sea turtle species in the Mediterranean Sea. The species is threatened by anthropomorphic activity that causes thousands of deaths and hundreds of strandings along the Mediterranean coast. Stranded turtles are often cared for in rehabilitation centres until they recover or die. The objective of this study was to characterize the gut microbiome of nine sea turtles stranded along the Sicilian coast of the Mediterranean Sea using high-throughput sequencing analysis targeting V3–V4 regions of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene. Stool samples were collected from eight specimens hosted in the recovery centre after a few days of hospitalization (under 7) and from one ho…

Electron paramagnetic resonance in a biomedical laboratory

2013

Differential modulation and prognostic values of immune-escape genes in uveal melanoma

2019

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary intraocular cancer in adults. In the present study, we aimed to characterize the immunological features of primary UM cancer and to provide an association with prognostic markers and outcome. Also, we assessed the influence of the microenvironment on the expression of inhibitory immune checkpoints in UM. Genes of interest included MHC Class I and Class II molecules, as well as inhibitory immune-checkpoints, i.e. PDL1, PDL2, B7-H3, B7-H4, TBFRSF6B, CD47, CD155, GAL9, HVEM and CD200. We observed significant lower levels of MHC genes in UM cells as compared to normal uveal melanocytes. Unexpectedly however, the expression levels of most of the ana…

Zeeman effect in sulfur monoxide: A tool to probe magnetic fields in star forming regions

2017

[Context] Magnetic fields play a fundamental role in star formation processes and the best method to evaluate their intensity is to measure the Zeeman effect of atomic and molecular lines. However, a direct measurement of the Zeeman spectral pattern from interstellar molecular species is challenging due to the high sensitivity and high spectral resolution required. So far, the Zeeman effect has been detected unambiguously in star forming regions for very few non-masing species, such as OH and CN.

COVID-19 infodemics: the role of mainstream and social media

2021

Performance of the QuantiFERON-cytomegalovirus (CMV) assay for detection and estimation of the magnitude and functionality of the CMV-specific gamma …

2012

ABSTRACTThe performance of the QuantiFERON-cytomegalovirus (CMV) assay was compared to that of a flow cytometry intracellular cytokine staining (ICS) method for the detection of CMV-specific gamma interferon (IFN-γ)-producing CD8+T-cell responses in allogeneic stem cell transplant (allo-SCT) recipients and for estimations of their magnitude and functionality. A total of 90 whole-blood specimens from 23 allo-SCT recipients was analyzed by both methods. Overall, the percentage of specimens that yielded concordant results by both methods was 68.8% (κ = 0.691; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.548 to 0.835), and the sensitivity of the QuantiFERON-CMV assay for the detection of positive IFN-γ T-ce…

Epidemiological cutoff values for fluconazole, itraconazole, posaconazole, and voriconazole for six Candida species as determined by the colorimetric…

2013

ABSTRACT In the absence of clinical breakpoints (CBP), epidemiological cutoff values (ECVs) are useful to separate wild-type (WT) isolates (without mechanisms of resistance) from non-WT isolates (those that can harbor some resistance mechanisms), which is the goal of susceptibility tests. Sensititre YeastOne (SYO) is a widely used method to determine susceptibility of Candida spp. to antifungal agents. The CLSI CBP have been established, but not for the SYO method. The ECVs for four azoles, obtained using MIC distributions determined by the SYO method, were calculated via five methods (three statistical methods and based on the MIC 50 and modal MIC). Respectively, the median ECVs (in mg/lit…

Dot-immunobinding assay with the globular domain of collagen type IV for antiglomerular basement membrane antibodies

1988

A dot-immunobinding assay for the detection of antiglomerular basement membrane antibodies has been developed. The globular domain NC1 of basement membrane collagen type IV was used as antigen. The assay proved to be specific, sensitive, and reproducible. Circulating antibodies in each of 12 sera from patients with florid Goodpasture's syndrome could be demonstrated, whereas sera from patients with Goodpasture's syndrome in clinical remission and various control sera showed no reactivity. The advantages of the dot-blot assay are: the usage of the purified Goodpasature target antigen NCI reduces unspecific binding of IgG; only minimal amounts of antigen are required to give a positive signal…

Relationship between the target antigen of liver-kidney microsomal (LKM) autoantibodies and rat isoenzymes of cytochrome P-450

1988

Chronic active hepatitis (CAH) is a clinical syndrome of different etiologies. Liver-kidney microsomal (LKM) autoantibodies characterize a subgroup of HBsAg negative CAH, which is considered to be an autoimmune liver disease. By immunoblotting analysis (IB) LKM positive sera have been shown to react strongly with a poly-peptide band at 50 kD. Therefore we investigated various rat microsomal enzymes with a molecular weight around 50 kD as potential candidate target antigens. These included epoxide hydrolase, cytochrome P-450 reductase, and phenobarbital-inducible isoenzymes of cytochrome P-450 (PB1, PB2, PB3a, PB3b). By radioimmunoassay (RIA) and IB LKM positive sera were shown to react with…