Study Flags Alpha-Gal Syndrome Risk in Blood Transfusions

Elizabeth McMahon
0:02

A tick-borne disease could spell trouble for patients who need blood transfusions. Plus, can AI really record and replicate every move in a successful lab experiment? One company thinks it can be done. This is Path News Network Daily edition from the College of American Pathologists. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. It's Wednesday, September 2nd. Alpha Gal syndrome, the tick-borne illness that can trigger allergic reactions to red meat and animal byproducts, can also complicate blood transfusions. A new study finds. The Alpha Gal molecule closely resembles the B antigen in blood, which can cause a reaction when alpha gal antibodies mistakenly bind to the blood type. Researchers from Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center tested the association in patients with alpha gal and type O blood, transfusing them with blood type B or AB units. They found that patients in U.S. regions with a high prevalence of Alpha Gal syndrome had significantly more allergic reactions than those with O blood type who received O units. The results, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, did not find increased reactions in regions with a low prevalence of Alpha Gal syndrome. Urinalysis is one of the most common lab tests detecting and counting cells, crystals, and organisms in urine that could indicate infection or disease. When a scan is abnormal, technologists go in for a closer look. Ensuring the human review is as accurate as the initial scan is critical for this high-volume test, says Dr. Keri Donaldson, Vice Chair of Clinical Pathology at Geisinger Medical Laboratories. He says the CAP's new urine sediment morphology assessment program helps labs achieve the highest competency in their reviews.

Dr. Keri Donaldson
2:05

It's a material that allows the individual to understand are they picking up what they should see, right? The cast, the presence or absence of these crystals or the microorganisms, and it allows the laboratory to compare the performance, right, across different individuals. So both of those things are really essential from a compliance and a quality perspective, right? Both the querying of the individual's performance as well as comparing that within your institution or even between institutions that you can do with the survey materials.

Elizabeth McMahon
2:36

The urine sediment assessment is one of several quality improvement offerings and tools available for 2027 delivery at the CAP's Proficiency Testing Section at the Laboratory Quality Solutions page. Advances in cancer research and treatment are generating data with promising implications for patients. But how can pathologists better structure, share, and integrate all that data to improve outcomes? That's the focus of the Future of Cancer Data Summit on October 2nd at the WIN Las Vegas, just prior to the CAP 26 kickoff. Dr. Mark Tuthill, head of pathology informatics at Henry Ford Health, will lead a session. He says collaboration is vital in this complex and growing field.

Dr. Mark Tuthill
3:38

These elements are complicated. There's somewhere on the order of 1100 to 1200 different possible permutations of how all of these factors interact with one another. So this is complicated. And what we know is that the outcomes that patients experience are not told very clearly by those numbers. So how do we get better? How do we become more consistent? How do we recognize which therapies are really impacting cancer care? Uh, and which therapies we need to do a better job at, uh, either getting it to the patient earlier or to refine those treatments so that they're more impactful. So just a lot to talk about.

Elizabeth McMahon
4:23

The day will include case examples across CAP electronic cancer protocols, informatics tools, AI opportunities, and others. And finally, why does lab research succeed or fail? Many factors can spell success or doom for an experiment, so sharing protocols, the procedures and decisions that comprise an experiment's recipe, are vital for others to reproduce the results. But scientists can't replicate a study just by reading it. Enter AI. A recent New York Times article follows the story of a system called transfer that's ingesting data about what happens in the lab using video, audio, and sensors attached to scientists and lab equipment. The goal? To track and document variations and procedures to make science better. Though the Massachusetts-based company's technology could improve some areas, a Cardiff University sociologist who studies scientific knowledge said, quote, it's not a silver bullet for scientific problems. That's all for today's Daily Edition. Be sure to check the show notes for more information on CAP's new quality improvement programs and the Cancer Data Summit. Got a story you'd like us to cover on the Daily Edition? Write to us at stories at Cap.org. We're back at 5 a.m. Eastern for another episode of the Daily Edition. I'm Elizabeth McMahon. Have a great day.