This message contains images. If you don't see images, click here to view. Click here to advertise in this news brief.   Mobile version   RSS   Subscribe   Unsubscribe   Archive  Media Kit | Clinical Laboratory Marketplace     Home   About   Scholarships   Meetings   Publications   Resources   Aug. 21, 2012   Smallpox can evolve rapidly despite low mutation rates Laboratory Equipment    Share    Poxviruses, a group of DNA-containing viruses that includes smallpox, are responsible for a wide range of diseases in humans and animals. They are highly virulent and able to cross species barriers, yet how they do so has been largely a mystery because of their low mutation rates. While smallpox was considered officially eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980, concerns about its use as a bioterrorism agent – and the finding that other poxviruses, such as monkeypox, can be transmitted from animals to humans – have spurred renewed interest in understanding how they replicate. More Far more could be done to stop the deadly bacteria C. diff USA Today    Share    Just days after doctors successfully removed a tumor from Bailey Quishenberry's brain, the 14-year-old was spiraling downhill, delirious and writhing in pain from an entirely new menace. Her abdomen swollen 10 times its normal size and her fever skyrocketing, Bailey began wishing she could die, just to escape the agony. Bailey had contracted a potentially fatal infection called Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, that ravages the intestines. More Fluoroquinolones tied to higher risk of serious arrhythmias Medscape Medical News    Share    Fluoroquinolones, especially gatifloxacin, moxifloxacin and ciprofloxacin, are associated with significantly increased risks of serious arrhythmias, according to a new study. The link has been suspected before, but little data exist to support it, researchers write in a report online in Clinical Infectious Diseases. More Infections among homeless could fuel wider epidemics Reuters via Fox News    Share    Homeless people across the world have dramatically higher rates of infection with tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis C and could fuel community epidemics that cost governments dearly, a study showed. With an estimated 650,000 homeless people in the United States and around 380,000 in Britain, experts said high levels of infection would not only cause yet more poverty and distress for those without homes, but could also become a wider problem. More Gene deletion drives more than a quarter of breast cancers Medical Xpress    Share    A new study shows that the lack of a certain gene occurs in almost 28 percent of human breast cancers, playing a role in some 60,000 breast cancer cases in the United States and 383,000 worldwide this year. Recent studies have observed loss of the gene NF1 in glioblastoma (an aggressive brain cancer), lung and ovarian cancers, but the significance has been overlooked because it was thought that two copies of the gene (one from each parent) needed to be missing to cause cancer. More Corticosteroids disappoint in dengue fever Reuters via Medscape Medical News    Share    A short course of oral corticosteroids given early in dengue fever did not improve outcomes or delay complications, a new study from Vietnam found. Researchers had speculated the drugs might be helpful given that complications of the disease such as dengue shock syndrome and hemorrhagic fever are thought to be mediated by the immune system. More CellaVision Automates and Standardizes the Manual Differential CellaVision introduces CellAtlas®, the perfect way to learn the basics of hematology cell morphology. This App for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch compliments our digital cell morphology portfolio, and is an educational tool to assist in the recognition and classification of blood cells, by utilizing mini-lectures and cell quizzes. More Triturus - True Open Flexibility As a leader in fully automated immunoassay testing systems, Grifols USA Diagnostic Division’s premier product, the TRITURUS® ELISA System is an open, fully automated, multi-test and multi-batch immunoassay system. Grifols USA is a major distributor of quality IVD ELISA tests for Infectious Disease, Autoimmune Diseases and many other disease states. Grifols’ Diagnostic products take the complexity out of clinical diagnostic testing. 1-800-379-0957. diaginfo@grifols.com Trust in Cleveland Clinic Laboratories Cleveland Clinic Laboratories is a full-service, national reference lab dedicated to providing world class care. We have a dedicated staff of more than 1,300 employees, including board-certified subspecialty pathologists, PhDs, technologists, technicians, and support personnel. Cleveland Clinic Laboratories is proud to serve hospitals, outpatient facilities and physician offices worldwide. For more information, please visit clevelandcliniclabs.com. Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into single gram Extreme Tech    Share    A bioengineer and geneticist at Harvard's Wyss Institute have successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data – around 700 terabytes – in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times. The work, carried out by George Church and Sri Kosuri, basically treats DNA as just another digital storage device. Instead of binary data being encoded as magnetic regions on a hard drive platter, strands of DNA that store 96 bits are synthesized, with each of the bases (TGAC) representing a binary value (T and G = 1, A and C = 0). More Staph-infected renal patients getting inferior treatment? Medscape Medical News    Share    Physicians in the United States may be too quick to prescribe vancomycin for patients receiving hemodialysis who develop methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections. Cefazolin might be a better choice, according to results from a new study published online in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Kevin E. Chan, M.D., from the Clinical Research Division, Fresenius Medical Care North America, and the Nephrology Division of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and colleagues studied the trends in antibiotic use among MSSA-infected patients receiving hemodialysis. More Hospital tech's arrest sets off hepatitis scare in 8 states, shows flaws in the system Fox News    Share    Radiology technician David Kwiatkowski was a few weeks into a temporary job at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-Presbyterian in 2008 when a co-worker accused him of lifting a syringe containing an addictive painkiller from an operating room and sticking it down his pants. In what may be the scariest part of all, authorities say that when he swiped the fentanyl syringe, he left another one in its place, filled with a dummy fluid, ready to be used on a patient. But Kwiatkowski did not go to jail. No one in Pittsburgh even called the police. More West Nile blamed in death of Illinois man as US battles virus CNN    Share    An Illinois man died from West Nile complications as the United States battles its biggest spike in the virus since 2004. This year's U.S. outbreak of West Nile, which is spread through infected mosquitoes, is one of the worst since the virus was first detected in the United States in 1999, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. More We've teamed up to save you even more on car insurance. Find out if you're eligible for exclusive GEICO savings by starting a rate quote now – just make sure you select your group affiliation when asked. MORE JoinYour Peers Many employers now require certification because they know that individuals who are certified are committed to their profession and to quality patient care. Learn how we can help! www.americanmedtech.org Relative risk of cardiovascular disease among people living with HIV Medscape Medical News    Share    Cardiovascular disease, a commonly used term for diseases of the heart and blood vessels, is the number one cause of death worldwide. It is projected that annual global cardiovascular deaths will increase from 16.7 million in 2002 to 23.9 million by 2030.The aim of this study was to estimate the relative risk of cardiovascular disease among people living with HIV compared with the HIV-uninfected population. More Internal microscopic diagnostic devices — clinicians need more training Medical News Today    Share    To diagnose illness in areas of the body that are hard-to-reach, clinicians increasingly use tiny space-age probes, which can see inside single living cells. A new study published in the journal Digestive Diseases and Sciences reveals that specialists who are beginning to use these devices may be interpreting what they see in different ways. More Why whooping cough is back MyHealthDaily via Fox News    Share    The number of whooping cough cases in the U.S. this year is on track to be the highest in 50 years, although one researcher says the main reason behind the disease's apparent resurgence is a heightened awareness of it. Besides improved reporting of cases of whooping cough (which is also called pertussis), factors in the disease's resurgence include the fact that vaccines don't completely protect against it, and that the current vaccine provides even less protection than previous ones did, according to Dr. James Cherry, a professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA. More Should young men be vaccinated against human papillomavirus? Medical News Today    Share    A new study published in Viral Immunology has sparked a debate on whether the human papillomavirus vaccination should be given to men. The review – available at www.liebertpub.com – was conducted by Gorren Low and colleagues from the University of Southern California and David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, and Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, D.C. The researchers assessed how cost effective it is to expand routine HPV vaccination to include young males as well as the potential for reducing illness caused by HPV infection. More Super-fast microscope captures circulating tumor cells with high sensitivity, resolution in real time Dark Daily    Share    There's a new optical microscope that can detect rogue cancer cells. It was developed by engineers at UCLA. The achievement could create new diagnostic capabilities for pathology and clinical laboratory medicine. The target for this new high-speed microscope are circulating cancer tumor cells. More Yosemite tourist dies after contracting hantavirus The Associated Press via USA Today    Share    A popular lodging area in Yosemite National Park could be linked to a rare rodent-borne disease that has killed a California tourist who stayed there this summer, officials said. A man who stayed at Curry Village in June died after contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. A woman who also stayed in a canvas tent cabin about 100 feet from him on overlapping days has become seriously ill, officials at the California park said. The virus was found in the feces of deer mice in the family friendly lodging area of cabins, according to tests by the Centers for Disease Control and state health officials. More Expand your career as a Clinical Lab Scientist at UCSF Medical Center. Opportunities available in San Francisco, CA in various areas - Chemistry, Hematology, Blood Bank, Immunology, Microbiology, Molecular Diagnostics, Bone Marrow Transplant, and Cytogenetics. Apply online or contact Cheryl Hardin at Cheryl.Hardin@ucsfmedctr.org for more information. EOE. Survey: Majority of Americans have never heard of sepsis Infection Control Today    Share    Sepsis kills 258,000 people every year in the United States, more than prostate cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer combined. Yet, according to a new poll commissioned by a leading patient advocacy group, fewer than half of all Americans have even heard of it. Among 2,203 adults surveyed online, only 40 percent acknowledged that they had even heard of the term sepsis. More Material discovered in blood cells that may affect malaria parasites Red Orbit    Share    Researchers at Duke University Medical Center may finally have discovered why people with sickle cell disease get milder cases of malaria than individuals who have normal red blood cells. In a finding that has eluded scientists for years, Duke researchers discovered that genetic material in red blood cells may help alter parasite activity via a novel mechanism that alters parasite gene regulation. More   ASCLS eNewsBytes Colby Horton, Vice President of Publishing, 469.420.2601 Download media kit Bob Kowalski, Content Editor, 469.420.2650    Contribute news This edition of the ASCLS eNewsBytes was sent to ##Email##. To unsubscribe, click here. Did someone forward this edition to you? Subscribe here -- it's free! Recent issues Aug. 14, 2012 Aug. 7, 2012 July 31, 2012 July 25, 2012 7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX 75063