INTRODUCTION Diagnosing tuberculosis in low-resource settings mostly relies on sputum smear microscopy. Improvement through capacity building is a priority. This project aimed to strengthen tuberculosis diagnosis at an intermediate level laboratory. METHODOLOGY The Italian National Institute for Infectious Diseases and the Italian Development Cooperation closely collaborated with regional and...

IN the winter of 1956 plans were laid for the development of a Virus Reference Laboratory in the Department of Microbiology, the Queen's University, Belfast, to be run jointly by the University and the Northern Ireland Hospitals Authority. This has gradually come into operation over the past eighteen months, and a report of the work done by this Reference Laboratory up till the end of December,...

BACKGROUND In a previous study PCR analysis of clinical samples from suspected cases of Buruli ulcer disease (BUD) from Togo and external quality assurance (EQA) for local microscopy were conducted at an external reference laboratory in Germany. The relatively poor performance of local microscopy as well as effort and time associated with shipment of PCR samples necessitated the implementation ...

T he selection of a reference laboratory is a critical step in establishing integrated laboratory services to meet the needs of a wide variety of hospitaland clinic-based physicians. Today, the role of the reference laboratory is under increasing scrutiny as primary labs look for a value-added partner in providing the service, support, and information essential for efficient and cost-effective ...

Monaghan et al. (6 ) in a Scottish population. Our study provides similar findings in an Italian population, without any differences between regional origins. Moreover, 7 of 16 subjects with the 7/7 genotype had STB within the reference interval. These data, in agreement with the recent study by Rudenski and Halsall (7 ), confirm that the Gilbert genotype is not always expressed. There is a nee...

A region consisting of 19 clinical laboratories harmonized their calibration of seven common enzymes by using fresh patient-pool sera. One of the laboratories was chosen to act as Regional Reference Laboratory (RRL). This laboratory used internationally accepted (mostly IFCC) methods at 37 degrees C, with an intralaboratory CV < or = 2.5%. First, the reference ranges of the RRL were verified by...