ADAM r-WBC system used for leukocyte measurement in leukoreduced blood components

Jedyną skuteczną metodą otrzymania ubogoleukocytarnych składników krwi jest poddanie ich filtracji przy użyciu filtrów antyleukocytarnych. W pracach na temat usuwania leukocytów ze składników krwi stwierdzono, że leukoredukcja nie tylko zapobiega przeniesieniu czynników zakaźnych, niehemolitycznym reakcjom gorączkowym oraz zmniejsza ryzyko alloimmunizacji HLA, ale także zapobiega wystąpieniu oporności na przetaczanie krwinek płytkowych. W centrach krwiodawstwa i krwiolecznictwa (CKiK) na terenie Polski od wielu lat stosuje się procedury usuwania leukocytów ze składników krwi przeznaczonych dla pacjentów wymagających stosowania tylko składników ubogoleukocytarnych. Kryteria akceptacji dla zawartości leukocytów pozwalające zakwalifikować składnik krwi jako ubogoleukocytarny (tzw. zakresy normy) są różne w Europie i w Ameryce Północnej. Według standardów Rady Europy oraz zaleceń Dyrektywy 2002/98/EC składniki krwi przeznaczone do przetoczenia uznaje się za ubogoleukocytarne, jeżeli zawierają poniżej 1 × 106 leukocytów/jednostkę. Norma ta obowiązuje również w Polsce. Wdrażanie europejskich wytycznych w zakresie zmniejszania zawartości leukocytów w krwi i jej składnikach wymaga stosowania szybkich i wiarygodnych metod kontroli jakości. Ostatnio coraz większym zainteresowaniem cieszy się urządzenie ADAM r-WBC (Advanced Detection Accurate Measurement, Nano Entek, Seul, Korea Płd.), stosowane do oznaczania liczby leukocytów w ubogoleukocytarnych koncentratach krwinek czerwonych (UKKCz) i ubogoleukocytarnych koncentratach krwinek płytkowych (UKKP). Urządzenie to jest alternatywą dla dotychczasowych metod liczenia leukocytów w ubogoleukocytarnych składnikach krwi. Celem niniejszej pracy było porównanie wyników oznaczania liczby leukocytów w ubogoleukocytarnych składnikach krwi przy zastosowaniu 3 metod: mikroskopowej, cytometrii przepływowej i automatycznej z wykorzystaniem systemu ADAM r-WBC. Badania prowadzono w dwóch ośrodkach — w Instytucie Hematologii i Transfuzjologii (IHiT) w Warszawie (etap I) oraz w Regionalnym Centrum Krwiodawstwa i Krwiolecznictwa (RCKiK) w Katowicach (etap II, po weryfikacji producenta i ponownej walidacji). W etapie I wykorzystano 94 próbki pobrane z UKKP i 34 próbki z UKKCz, zaś w etapie II użyto 29 próbek UKKP i 26 UKKCz. Wyniki etapu I wykazały, że liczba leukocytów oznaczona za pomocą systemu ADAM r-WBC była znacznie wyższa („fałszywie” zawyżona) niż uzyskana przy użyciu metody mikroskopowej. Pomimo zawyżonych wyników uzyskanych w I etapie badań, w RCKiK w Katowicach urządzenie ADAM r-WBC jest rutynowo stosowane do oznaczania liczby leukocytów w preparatach ubogoleukocytarnych, ponieważ zostało poddane weryfikacji zgodnie z uwagami IHiT i RCKiK, jak również ponownej walidacji.  The only effective method of obtaining leukoreduced blood components is filtration. Literature on leukoreduction reports that implementation of leukocyte reduction in blood components minimizes the risk of transmission of bacterial or viral infections, non-hemolytic febrile reactions, alloimmunization with HLA antigens as well as platelet transfusion refractoriness. In the Polish Blood Transfusion Centers leukoreduction has been used for many years now for the preparation of blood components dedicated to patients who can be administered only leukoreduced blood components. Standards set for residual leukocyte count ( a component to be marked as leukoreduced) are different for Europe and the United States. European standards set the residual leukocyte count below 1 × 106 leukocytes per unit of blood component. The criterium is also obligatory in Poland. European recommendations for leukoreduction require the implementation of effective and reliable methods of quality control. Much attention has lately been paid to the ADAM r-WBC system (Advanced Detection Accurate Measurement, Nano Entek, Seul, South Korea) based on counting WBCs in leukoreduced red blood cell concentrates (RBCCs) and leukoreduced platelet concentrates (PCs). The method was developed as an alternative to the hitherto used methods of residual leukocyte measurements in leukodepleted blood components. The aim of the study was to compare the leukocyte count measurements in leukoreduced RBCCs and leukoreduced PCs performed with 3 methods: microscopic, flow cytometry and automatic with ADAM r-WBC system. The study was conducted in two centers; the Institute of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine (IHTM — stage I) and in the Regional Blood Transfusion Center in Katowice (RBTC — stage II, following manufacturer’s verification and repeated validation). In stage I we used 94 samples of leukoreduced PCs and 34 samples of RBCC while in stage II — 29 samples of PCs and 26 samples of RBCC. The results of study stage I revealed that the residual leukocyte count measured with ADAM r-WBC system was much higher than the measurement with the microscopic method. Despite the higher values obtained in study stage I, the ADAM r-WBC system is in routine use for the measurement of residual leukocyte count in leukoreduced blood components at RBTC in Katowice as the system/ /equipment was verified and re-validated by the manufacturer according to the recommendations of IHTM and RBTC in Katowice

International consensus guideline for reporting transmission electron microscopy results in the diagnosis of Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (BEAT PCD TEM Criteria)

Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) is a heterogeneous genetic condition. European and North American diagnostic guidelines recommend transmission electron microscopy (TEM) as one of a combination of tests to confirm a diagnosis. However, there is no definition of what constitutes a defect or consensus on reporting terminology. The aim of this project was to provide an internationally agreed ultrastructural classification for PCD diagnosis by TEM. A consensus guideline was developed by PCD electron microscopy experts representing 18 centres in 14 countries. An initial meeting and discussion were followed by a Delphi consensus process. The agreed guideline was then tested, modified and retested through exchange of samples and electron micrographs between the 18 diagnostic centres. The final guideline a) Provides agreed terminology and a definition of class 1 defects which are diagnostic for PCD; b) Identifies class 2 defects which can indicate a diagnosis of PCD in combination with other supporting evidence; c) Describes features which should be included in a ciliary ultrastructure report to assist multidisciplinary diagnosis of PCD d) Defines adequacy of a diagnostic sample. This tested and externally validated statement provides a clear guideline for the diagnosis of PCD by TEM which can be used to standardise diagnosis internationally.</p

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press