Evaluation of Laboratory Diagnostic Methods

该项目的目标是改善疾病诊断的临床实验室方法。研究包括分析临床实验室实践，分析实验室测试的准确性，以及开发新的测试和测试技术。一项关于甲状旁腺手术期间测量甲状旁腺激素的实验室实践的全国性调查的数据被评估并发表。数据通过对糖尿病患者用于测量血糖水平的血糖仪性能的多中心评估来评估。该研究为血糖仪的一致性和准确性提供了最广泛的评估之一。这将有助于建立血糖仪的性能目标，并提出提高其准确性的方法。结果即将公布。肾脏疾病的诊断已发展出多种新方法。这些最近的发展在一篇发表的社论中进行了回顾，正在进行的研究正在寻求改进肌酐的测量和改进实验室方法对肾脏的诊断。质谱法作为一种分析血液和尿液标本的新方法正在进行评估。基质辅助激光解吸/电离飞行时间（MALDI TOF）质谱法是一种分析生物液体中蛋白质和肽的复杂模式的方法。我们的研究结果表明，该方法将适用于高密度和低密度脂蛋白（HDL和LDL）的许多小蛋白质成分的研究。这些研究可能为高密度脂蛋白和低密度脂蛋白的结构提供新的见解，这些结构通常在实验室测量，以评估心血管疾病的风险。这些研究还可能确定可用于常规诊断方法的新技术。正在进行的研究正在研究氨基酸同型半胱氨酸与血浆蛋白之间的相互作用，延伸了先前发表的研究，研究了同型半胱氨酸、半胱氨酸和血浆蛋白之间的关系。同型半胱氨酸浓度的增加与心脏病和血凝块的异常形成有关，因此有必要更好地了解这种氨基酸的相互作用。其他研究的目标是改善蛋白酶活性的测量，蛋白酶参与许多重要的过程，如血液凝固。人们开发了新的试剂来测定蛋白酶的活性。

Goals of this project are to improve clinical laboratory methods for diagnosis of disease. Studies include analysis of clinical laboratory practices, analysis of the accuracy of laboratory tests, and development of new tests and testing technologies. The data from a national survey of laboratory practices for measurement of parathyroid hormone during surgery on parathyroid glands was evaluated and published. Data was evaluated from a multicenter evaluation of the performance of glucose meters used by diabetics to measure their blood sugar levels. The study provides one of the most extensive evaluations of the consistency and accuracy of blood glucose meters. This will be useful for establishing goals for the performance of glucose meters and suggests approaches for improving their accuracy. Results are in press. A variety of new approaches have been developed for diagnosis of kidney disease. These recent developments were reviewed in a published editorial and ongoing research is seeking to improve the measurement of creatinine and to improve the diagnosis of kidney by laboratory methods. Mass spectrometry methods are under evaluation as a new approach for analysis of blood and urine specimens. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI TOF) mass spectrometry serves as a method for analysis of complex patterns of proteins and peptides in biological fluids. Results of our studies suggest that this method will be useful for study of a number of the small protein components of high-density and low-density lipoproteins (HDL and LDL). These studies may provide new insights into the structure of HDL and LDL that are commonly measured in the laboratory to assess risk for cardiovascular disease. These studies may also identify new technologies that can be applied for routine diagnostic methods. Ongoing studies are examining the interactions of the amino acid homocysteine with plasma proteins in extension of previous published studies that have examined relationships between homocysteine, cysteine, and plasma proteins. Increased concentrations of homocysteine are related to heart disease and abnormal formation of blood clots so there is a need for better understanding of interactions of this amino acid. Other studies have been directed at improving the measurement of the activity of proteases that are involved in many important processes such as blood coagulation. New reagents have been developed for measuring protease activity.