We evaluated data from gastroenteritis outbreaks in Oregon to assess sensitivity of stool testing for norovirus and determine number of specimens needed to confirm norovirus as the cause. Norovirus can be readily confirmed if 3-6 specimens are collected any time ≤7 days after onset of diarrhea and for almost that long after symptoms resolve.

T he Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI, formerly NCCLS) has been publishing standards and guidelines for clinicallaboratory procedures since the early 1970s. At least six documents detail proper specimen-collection and -processing procedures; most have been recently revised. The revisions reflect significant changes that all specimen-collection personnel, regardless of their pro...

2.1 Chain of Custody ..................................................................................................................14 2.2 Specimen Collection .............................................................................................................15 2.2.1 Specimen Containers................................................................................................15...

Background: The integrity of collection protocols in biobanking is essential for a high-quality sample preparation process. However, there is not currently a well-defined universal method for integrating collection protocols in the biobanking information system (BIMS). Therefore, an electronic schema of the collection protocol that is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) is required to mai...

Damage to specimen collections occurs in practically every herbarium across the world. Hence, some precautions must be taken, such as investigating factors that cause damage their and evaluating collection handling usage policy. However, manual investigation of causes requires a lot effort time. Only few studies have attempted investigate damage. So far, non-gaussian approach detecting specimen...

This chapter reports on a field trial involving the application of hair assays to a probation population. The objectives were to evaluate the general reactions of probation officers and probationers to the collection of hair samples, to compare the outcomes of the hair samples with the outcomes of urinalyses (which the probationers undergo routinely), to note and react to differences in the pre...