Roche has extended its serology panel to include a new generation Elecsys anti-HCV II, optimising workflows, saving costs and providing accurate, rapid results.
With an estimated 216,000 individuals chronically infected in the UK alone, hepatitis C (HCV) remains a major public health problem, and HCV-related end stage liver disease and mortality continue to increase. It is thus necessary to sustain and enhance efforts to raise awareness, prevent new infections, increase diagnosis, and treat more individuals with infection. Due to the high rate of asymptomatic infections, clinical diagnosis of hepatitis C is difficult and screening assays are of major importance.This new assay can play an effective part in this strategy, as it is used to demonstrate the presence of antibodies against HCV during acute and chronic stages of disease, and after a passed infection. A hundred percent clinical sensitivity is provided for all known genotypes, leading to early detection of infection and patient-oriented decision making. With high specificity as demonstrated in blood donors (99.84%) and samples from clinical routine, pregnant women and dialysis patients, use of this assay increases laboratory testing efficiencies. To optimise workflows and provide operational cost savings, the ready-to-use liquid reagents have a long onboard stability of 31 days on all the company’s immunoassay platforms. The new assay complements the Roche serology assay menu that includes assays for Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, HIV, TORCH, Herpes, Syphilis and other infectious diseases.
Read more

The second generation of the popular automated urinalysis system that combines a urine chemistry analyzer and a urine sediment analyzer is introduced. The LabUMat 2 is designed for high volume urine test strip reading and for analyzing three physical parameters. The UriSed 2 is able to detect urine particles in urine sediment with high accuracy. Relying on the automation of traditional manual microscopy and advanced image processing the sediment analyzer offers a unique method for sedimentation. It performs sample preparation, provides whole field of view microscopic images of sediment and identifies urine particles in a fully automated way, while human evaluation is also possible any time after the measurement on screen, without manual microscopy. The interfaced LabUMat 2 & UriSed 2 analyzers form a Complete Urine Laboratory System working without any special liquid reagents. This latest development of 77 Elektronika is a walk-away system dealing with the workload of big laboratories. The automated technology improves diagnostic quality by increased reproducibility and accuracy and also improves productivity by eliminating the time consuming procedure of manual sample preparation.  

More info – contact: sales@e77.hu
Read more

Although widely understood and recognised as a key marker in wound healing, currently elevated protease activity (EPA) in chronic wounds goes undetected as there are no visual cues for it. A recently published study showed that chronic wounds with EPA have a 90% probability that they will not heal without appropriate intervention. The estimated 30 million chronic wounds treated each year account for approximately 3% of total health expenditure. Until now, with almost 30% of non-healing wounds having EPA, the absence of a test could result in ineffective treatment choices, leading to significant cost to healthcare providers. Wound care clinicians’ calls for better diagnostic tools to aid wound assessment have now been answered with the CE marking of WOUNDCHECK Protease Status, the world’s first rapid, point-of-care diagnostic test developed specifically for chronic wounds. It has the potential to revolutionise wound care by enabling early, targeted intervention and cost-effective use of advanced therapies to modulate protease activity. Designed to form part of routine wound assessment, the test is easy-to-use and provides results in just 15 minutes at the point of care. This enables the test to immediately influence treatment decisions and help clinicians target advanced wound care therapies more effectively by identifying when EPA exists in chronic wounds. As the implementation of point-of-care testing is new to many wound care clinicians, there is a new online training tool for the training of prospective users.
Read more

The first of a number of new microarrays for use in cancer research has been released. The new CytoSure Haematological Cancer +SNP array is optimised for the study of the haematological malignancies Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) and Multiple Myeloma (MM), as well as Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPN) and Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS). The new array offers confident detection of both copy number variation (CNV) and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) on a single chip for these diseases. This is achieved by utilising OGT’s novel array design, which combines long oligo array comparative genomic hybridisation (aCGH) probes for CNV detection with fully validated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) content for identifying LOH. The probes on the new array have been optimised to target regions known to be important predictors of disease progression and patient prognosis in haematological cancers, while providing good backbone coverage. These features facilitate the rapid, reliable identification of key genomic aberrations, while the complementary, industry-leading CytoSure Interpret Software allows intuitive, single-click data analysis. Using the new array, researchers can move quickly and assuredly from processing their samples to generating relevant biological insight.
The SNP probe design is unique. Analysis is carried out using an intensity-based comparison between the two SNP alleles, meaning that no changes to the standard aCGH protocol are required and any reference sample can be used. This allows the two tests to operate effectively on the same array. In addition, the arrays utilise 60-mer oligonucleotide probes, which have been shown to offer higher signal-to-noise ratios and increased specificity and sensitivity, providing the highest data quality possible. For optimum performance, the array can be combined with the CytoSure Genomic DNA Labelling Kit, which offers high signal intensities enabling easier allele discrimination.
Read more