Ben Franklin said: "Critics are our friends, they show us our faults". A true statement. When a reporter from Wisconsin wrote a story about newborn screening turn-around times around the country, we found out that we had room for improvement when it comes to the time it takes newborn metabolic screening samples to get from AZ hospitals to our Lab. Basically, [...]
Tuberculosis and mankind share a dramatic and intertwined history. TB has caused millions of deaths every year for centuries, been found in Egyptian mummies, has placed patients into sanatoriums, and has even has a folklore link relating it with vampires, The drama continues into this decade: in 2012, there were 8.8 million new cases of [...]
Last year, a new SARS-like virus called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) broke out in Saudi Arabia. Since then, 94 cases of the very lethal disease have been reported by the World Health Organization (50% of the cases have been fatal). All the cases have been on the Arabian Peninsula. The virus causes severe [...]
Just as we expected, the sample that we tested for H7N9 influenza today was negative. Thanks to our Lab team for staying a little late this evening to run the test. Even though it was very likely to be negative from the beginning- it's still important to follow up on every lead. After all, vigilance [...]
China is continuing to report more and more cases of the new H7N9 Influenza virus. So far they’ve confirmed 108 cases with a death rate of about 20% (21 deaths) All the cases appear to have jumped from birds to humans- meaning that there’s no human-to-human transmission (which is good). One concern is that if a person becomes infected [...]
Guest post from Kathryn Wangsness, Chief for the Office of Laboratory Services The Arizona State Public Health Lab is celebrating the dedication of its laboratory personnel next week as part of Laboratory Professionals Week. Laboratory Professionals Week was originally established to honor the more than 300,000 scientists, technicians and pathologists who perform testing vital to [...]
