GOALS AND BACKGROUND Relatives of patients with celiac disease have an increased lifetime risk of developing celiac disease. Repeat screening of relatives would improve diagnosis rates, but at significant cost. Genetic testing before screening would potentially reduce costs by eliminating HLA-DQ2 and DQ8 negative patients who are at extremely low risk for developing celiac disease. STUDY A de...

HIV testing plays a critical role in preventing the spread of the virus and identifying infected individuals in need of care. Voluntary counseling and testing centers (VCTs) not only conduct testing but they also provide counseling. Since a proportion of people who test negative for HIV on their previous visit will return for retesting, the frequency of retesting and the characteristics of thos...

Prompted by reports challenging the validity of the low-positive Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis results generated by the APTIMA Combo 2 assay (Gen-Probe, Incorporated) and by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation to confirm N. gonorrhoeae- or C. trachomatis-positive screens by using an alternative amplification target, we report on a comparison of this mea...

CONTEXT Routine repeat testing of critical values is a long-standing practice in many clinical laboratories; however, its usefulness and necessity remain to be empirically established and no regulatory requirements yet exist for verification of the critical value results obtained by repeat analysis. OBJECTIVE To determine whether repeat testing of critical values is useful and necessary in a ...

BACKGROUND Laboratory testing is the single highest-volume medical activity and drives clinical decision-making across medicine. However, the overall landscape of inappropriate testing, which is thought to be dominated by repeat testing, is unclear. Systematic differences in initial vs. repeat testing, measurement criteria, and other factors would suggest new priorities for improving laboratory...

BACKGROUND Routine screening for HIV infection leads to early detection and treatment. We examined patient characteristics associated with repeated screening in a high prevalence country. METHODS We analyzed data from a cohort of 5,229 adults presenting for rapid HIV testing in the outpatient departments of 2 South African hospitals from November 2006 to August 2010. Patients were eligible if...

AIM To investigate the potential of false inclusion of a close genetic relative in paternity testing by using computer generated families. METHODS 10000 computer-simulated families over three generations were generated based on genotypes using 15 short tandem repeat loci. These data were used in assessing the probability of inclusion or exclusion of paternity when the father is actually a sib...

This paper presents models for repeat HIV screening under conditions of constant low HIV incidence. The models reveal a direct link between the prevalence of undetected HIV infection and the screening interval between repeat HIV tests. We show how to select screening intervals that either achieve a given HIV prevalence level, or optimally balance the cost of repeat HIV testing against the cost ...