I n the article by Chao et al, “Plasma Levels of Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin/Kexin Type 9 Are Elevated in Patients With Peripheral Artery Disease and Associated With Metabolic Disorders and Dysfunction in Circulating Progenitor Cells,” which published online on May 20, 2016 and was included in the May 2016 issue of the journal (J Am Heart Assoc. 2016;5: e003497 doi: 10.1161/JAHA.116.003497...

Three chemicals (luminol, f luorescein, and Bluestar) are photographically compared. The results demonstrate that Bluestar performs as well or better than luminol and f luorescein. Introduction Detecting and photographing latent bloodstains at a crime scene can be challenging. The ease through which a presumptive chemical test is prepared, administered, and viewed is the first obstacle. Photogr...

Plasmid purification is a basic tool of molecular biologists. Although the development of plasmid isolation kits utilizing silica spin columns reduced the time and labor spent on plasmid purification, achieving large plasmid DNA yields still requires significant time and effort. Here we introduce the Miraprep, a rapid protocol that allows isolation of plasmid DNA using commercial Miniprep kits,...

Most laboratories in Pakistan use expensive imported clinical chemistry reagent kits resulting in high cost/test to the patients. To reduce these costs, reagents were prepared from basic chemicals, substrates and enzymes imported from Sigma Chemical Company U.K. This reduced the cost/test by up to 500% in some reagents. The quality of these reagents was tested by Wellcome External, Q.C. Locally...

AIMS To examine A, C, Y, and W135 Neisseria meningitidis serogroup characterisation by ultrasonic standing wave enhanced latex agglutination tests (USELATs) of clinical samples. In addition, to determine USELAT enhancement of detection sensitivity for the individual antigens compared with conventional card latex agglutination tests (LATs). METHODS Wellcogen (Abbott Murex), Slidex meningite ki...

A novel avian influenza A H7N9-subtype virus emerged in China in 2013 and threatened global public health. Commercial kits that specifically detect avian influenza A (H7N9) virus RNA are urgently required to prepare for the emergence and potential pandemic of this novel influenza virus. The safety and effectiveness of three commercial molecular diagnostic assays were evaluated using a quality-c...

An immunoassay-based algorithm, involving three commercial kits, was introduced and evaluated for screening and identification of Giardia/Cryptosporidium antigens in human stool specimens. Initially, Giardia/Cryptosporidium Chek kit (TechLab), an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), was adopted for screening. The ELISA-positive reactions were subsequently characterised by RIDA Quick Giard...

Evaluation boards are popular as prototyping platforms in embedded software development. They often are preferred over simulation to avoid modeling effort and simulation times as well as over complete hardware prototypes to reduce development cost. A particular problem arises when trying to verify the running time bounds of embedded software. The paper presents the use of a commercial evaluatio...

Three commercially available kits for 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D [1,25(OH)2D] determination were compared with a liquid-chromatographic method. Serum samples were analyzed for 1,25(OH)2D from 70 healthy subjects (age 2.2-17.5 years; 35 males, 35 females), some (n = 5) given orally high vitamin D3 doses. In addition, 1,25(OH)2D was measured in 28 patients with untreated diseases associated with low...