A rationale is offered and methodology illustrated for integrating the fundamental steps involved in the collection and processing of blood for laboratory evaluation. The approach taken in the development of these concepts and components greatly extends the possibilities of laboratory systems integration without upsetting established modalities. A prototype design of the integrated blood-collec...

Background The Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study is a multicenter prospective birth cohort study designed to examine genetic and environmental factors related to the development of childhood asthma, allergies, and atopic dermatitis. The CHILD study events include the collection of blood samples at ages 1 and 5 years for all subjects. Blood collection is a critical a...

BACKGROUND Blood samples are usually collected daily from different collection points, such hospitals and health centers, and transported to a core laboratory for testing. This paper presents a project to improve the collection routes of two of the largest clinical laboratories in Spain. These routes must be designed in a cost-efficient manner while satisfying two important constraints: (i) two...

...........................................................................................1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .....................................................................2 ORIGINAL ARTICLES.............................................................................3 PROLOGUE ...........................................................................................4 BACKGROUND......

The Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) ethics review board (ERB) has been solicited in an unprecedented way to provide advice and review research protocols in an 'emergency' mode during the recent Ebola epidemic. Twenty-seven Ebola-related study protocols were reviewed between March 2014 and August 2015, ranging from epidemiological research, to behavioural research, infectivity studies and clinica...

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...

The usefulness of preparatory vulval cleansing before urine specimen collection was evaluated in women aged 16 to 75 years attending a general practice. A total of 316 specimens were examined, 158 from women with symptoms of cystitis and 158 from controls. No significant differences were found in the numbers of contaminated or unreliable results between the specimens collected with and those co...

Epigenetics is believed to provide great chances for a better understanding of the development and treatment of many diseases where the analysis of genomic DNA has so far failed to provide conclusive answers. Methylcytosine is a frequently used quantitative marker of epigenetic studies. Since immediate analysis of sampled material is in most cases not possible, storage time and conditions are c...