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Hindawi Publishing CorporationBioMed Research InternationalVolume 2013, Article ID 269194, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/269194

EditorialLaboratory Medicine

Mina Hur,1 Andrew St. John,2 and Antonio La Gioia3

1 Department of Laboratory Medicine, Konkuk University School of Medicine, 120-1 Neungdong-ro, Hwayang-dong, Gwangjin-gu,Seoul 143-729, Republic of Korea

2 Australian Research Council, Canberra, ACT, Australia3 Italian Society of Clinical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Milan, Italy

Correspondence should be addressed to Mina Hur; [email protected]

Received 11 April 2013; Accepted 11 April 2013

Copyright © 2013 Mina Hur et al.This is an open access article distributed under theCreativeCommonsAttributionLicense, whichpermits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Clinical laboratories have a vital role to play in translatingresearch findings into clinically useful measurements. Thisinvolves assessment of new procedures to ensure that they areanalytically valid and also continually integrating the findingsfrom new studies into routine practice.These important tasksare covered in this special issue on laboratorymedicinewhichincludes a wide variety of laboratory-related topics as illus-trated by three review articles and 12 research papers.The firstreview article by D.-H. Ko et al. comprehensively examinesthe methods available for haptoglobin typing and discussesthe characteristics, clinical applications, and limitations ofeach method. A. Noto et al. describe the role of neutrophilgelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) for managing acutekidney injury and the potential benefits derived from thecombined clinical use of urine NGAL and metabolomics inkidney disease.The third review by E.Urrechaga et al. looks atnew laboratory biomarkers for hypochromia including theirclinical significance and utility in daily practice.

Several papers examine issues in diagnostic hematology,one of the traditional areas of laboratory testing. Y. Namet al. assess hypercoagulability using a relatively new thromb-omodulin-induced thrombin generation assay (TGA) inpatients with liver cirrhosis.They show that, although routinecoagulation tests did not detect the thrombotic tendency incirrhosis, the TGA could detect hypercoagulability in cirrho-sis. The paper by M. Hur et al. emphasizes that prothrombintime international normalized ratio (INR) measurements bypoint-of-care testing coagulometers still need to be con-firmed with INR measurements in the laboratory. H. R. Leeet al. evaluate the relationship between mean platelet volume

(MPV) and characteristics of cord blood (CB) units andshows thatMPVmay be one of the most useful parameters toassist withmaking decisions about the priority for processingspecimens in the cord blood bank. F. Chongliang et al., intheir interesting study on complete blood counts, suggest thata model that uses levels of neutrophils, lymphocytes, andplatelets is potentially useful in the objective evaluation ofsurvival time or disease severity in unselected critically illpatients.

Three interesting papers come from the areas of serol-ogy/immunology, chemistry, and microbiology. K. Lee et al.evaluate the overall efficacy of reverse sequence screening forsyphilis (RSSS) and examine the practical issues associatedwith the routine investigation of syphilis. The study byM. Han et al. analyzes the degree of concordance betweenthe various multiple allergen simultaneous test assays and areference method. J. Gervasoni et al. evaluate various assaykits for 25-hydroxyvitamin D2/D3 and show that they haveacceptable agreement with liquid chromatography-tandemmass spectrometry.

Five papers deal with the growing area of moleculardiagnostics. T. Kaewphinit et al. combined a loop-mediatedisothermal amplification method with a chromatographiclateral-flow dipstick and show that it can specifically andrapidly detect the IS6110 gene of M. tuberculosis. S. Kim etal. introduced a new allele-specific real-time PCR system forTPMT genotyping, which can be used to improve the efficacyand safety of thiopurine treatments in clinical practice. R.Januchowsk et al. analyzed MDR gene expression in drug-resistant ovarian cancer cell lines. They suggest that it is

2 BioMed Research International

possible to predict cross-resistance to other drugs when theclassical MDR, which is correlated with P-gp expression, isinvolved. S. M. Hwang et al. evaluated the human plateletantigen (HPA) genotype and/or theCD109mRNAexpressionin various human cell types. They demonstrate that the 4-1BB signal pathway plays a key role in organ transplantationtolerance. Lastly the paper by Y. Shi et al. demonstrates thatgene silencing of 4-1BB by RNA interference inhibits theacute rejection in rats with liver transplantation.

We hope that these papers in this special issue of BioMedResearch Internationalwill help to confirm the important rolethat clinical laboratories play in translational research andthe need to continuously update laboratory practice as newfindings and developments appear.

Mina HurAndrew St. JohnAntonio La Gioia

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