Microbiology / Infectious Disease

CT scans and hiatal/abdominal ultrasounds could not uncover why, whenever he ate steak, Joseph Ducaji experienced severe stomach problems, itchy hives, chills, and nausea. It took specialized testing from Mayo Clinic to unlock a little-known condition caused by a tick bite (and, no, it’s not Lyme disease).

In this month's "Hot Topic," Bobbi Pritt, M.D., describes the challenges to traditional microscopy for the detection of protozoa in stool specimens, lists potential uses of artificial intelligence in parasite detection, and discusses workflow modifications that may be needed when implementing digital slide scanning and AI-assisted interpretation.

In this episode of “Answers From the Lab,” host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic, and Elitza Theel, Ph.D., director of the Infectious Diseases Serology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, talk about West Nile virus and why laboratories and the public need to be aware as mosquitoes reemerge.

In this episode of “Answers From the Lab,” host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic, and Nancy Wengenack, Ph.D., director of the Mycology and Mycobacteriology Laboratories at Mayo Clinic, discuss the increased focus on fungi and why emerging fungal infections can be concerning for health care facilities.

As warm weather returns so do vector-borne diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitos. In this episode of “Answers From the Lab,” host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic, and William Morice II, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic Laboratories, discuss the increasing rates of tick-borne diseases and how to test for and prevent them. Listen to learn more.

Elitza Theel, Ph.D., explains how Mayo Clinic Laboratories' unique Histoplasma/Blastomyces test provides cost-effective evaluation for fungal infections that cause pulmonary illness. The assay reliably detects both Histoplasma and Blastomyces pathogens in a single test.

In this episode of “Answers From the Lab,” host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic, and Matthew Binnicker, Ph.D., director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, discuss why avian influenza has recently been in the news and lessons learned from managing COVID-19.

Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a lasting impact on the lives of millions of people around the world, including the many brave health care workers who risked their own health to provide lifesaving care to those infected by the virus. That care was made possible, in part, by the lasting impact that the pandemic has also had on laboratory testing.

Host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., is joined by Robin Patel, M.D., co-director of the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic and director of the Mayo Clinic Infectious Diseases Research Laboratory, for a discussion on the rising cases and reports of group A streptococcus and antibiotic resistant gonorrhea across the United States.

In this episode of “Answers From the Lab,” host and William Morice II, M.D., Ph.D., discuss what’s causing recent outbreaks of norovirus and how to keep yourself protected from this leading cause of foodborne illness in the United States.

William Morice II, M.D., Ph.D., president and CEO of Mayo Clinic Laboratories, joins “Answers From the Lab” for his weekly leadership update with host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., chair of the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic. In this episode, Dr. Morice shares his biggest takeaways from this year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, California, and gives an update on the COVID-19 public health emergency.  

Matthew Binnicker, Ph.D., director of the Clinical Virology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic, joins host Bobbi Pritt, M.D., on this week’s episode of the "Answers From the Lab" podcast. In this episode, they discuss the ongoing respiratory virus season, a new test for measles available at Mayo Clinic Laboratories, and some tips to stay healthy.

New research by Robin Patel, M.D. and others at Mayo Clinic has found that the use of a “transcriptomic-based cellular deconvolution tool” called CIBERSORTx could help improve the detection of infectious and non-infectious causes of failed joint replacement surgeries.