[Diagnostic workup in front of an hypereosinophilia in 2020]. / Démarche diagnostique devant une hyperéosinophilie en 2020.

The discovery of eosinophilia above 1.5 G/L should not be considered innocuous, requiring monitoring for etiology and possible secondary organ damage. Among these, cardiac localization is the most worrying, sometimes indolent, to be systematically sought by ultrasound and magnetic resonance. The potential etiologies are very numerous, mostly reactive and corticosensitive, much more rarely clonal in relation to a malignant hemopathy usually chronic and myeloid, sometimes sensitive to tyrosine kinase inhibitors.

Antidoping: From health tests to the athlete biological passport.

The athlete biological passport (ABP) was implemented by the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 2008. However, this improvement in the fight against doping was preceded with different milestones since 1996. In this paper, a detailed evolution of the ABP from traditional direct (urine) testing for antidoping purposes is presented. A chronological overview of the ABP including earlier non-disclosed information and contemporary documentation are shown and documented. The strategic development from on-site competition blood testing, called "health tests", to the structure of the ABP is explained in this historical overview which provides information to the antidoping community and general public regarding the beginning of blood doping tests.

Scientific technologies of national identity as colonial legacies: extracting the Spanish nation from equatorial Guinea.

This paper examines how Spanish techno-scientific discourses and practices shaped metropolitan Spanish and colonial Guinean bodies and identities. It focuses on the range of technologies of biopower--from fingerprinting and blood testing to racial and geographic discourses--that constituted Guinean bodies in ambivalent ways during two periods: the first decades of the 20th century, and the post-Civil War period of the Francoist regime. In the first decades of the 20th century, blood tests were imposed on the local population as a legal requirement for obtaining identity cards in colonial Guinea; the identity cards offered them a severely restricted citizen status, especially if they were female. Indeed, the new blood testing technologies played a key role in efforts to control, reform and identify 'natives', less as subjects than as labouring bodies. During Franco's dictatorship, following the end of the Spanish Civil War (1939), the colonies became a space for the reconstruction of a unified Spanish national identity through two key strategies: 'detribalization' and 'hispanicization', which were carried out through a web of techno-scientific practices--in medicine and psychology as well as geography and anthropology--that included fingerprinting, blood testing, measurements of intelligence and racial discourses. Under the Franco regime, these practices not only justified violent, racist forms of exploitation, but were also used to stake a claim on Guinean colonial territories and bodies by emptying them of their existing identities and then reconstituting them under a single Spanish national identity.

International Council for Standardization in Haematology - the first 40 years.

This brief history of the origin and development of ICSH must, inevitably, be selective as it has been extracted from the many pages of the records of the meetings of the ICSH board and its secretariat, the annual assembly and the reports of the various expert panels and working groups. It is hoped that it will give a picture of the way in which ICSH functioned and the many experts around the world who have contributed to its activities - but with an apology and appreciation, to other colleagues who have not been named in this annotation, but who made significant contributions to the activities that are described.

Testing for lupus anticoagulants: all that a clinician should know.

The presence of lupus anticoagulants (LA) in plasma alone or in combination with solid-phase antiphospholipid antibodies is an important prerequisite to define the antiphospholipid syndrome. The lack of specific tests to identify LA prompted standardization authorities to define a set of diagnostic criteria based on indirect evidence of the presence of LA and defined as screening, mixing and confirmatory studies. Accordingly, these studies must be carried out on patient plasmas and the relevant criteria satisfied before a firm diagnosis of LA can be made. Clinicians involved in LA testing should be aware of the limits which are inherent to this diagnosis, especially in patients who at the time of testing are on heparin and/or oral anticoagulant treatment, or are close to the acute thrombotic event. This article is aimed at reviewing the current situation and the light and shadows associated with this diagnostic procedure.

[Two hundred blood tests from Auschwitz. A notorious research project and the question about the contribution Adolf Butenandts]. / Zweihundert Blutproben aus Auschwitz. Ein notorisches Forschungsvorhaben und die Frage nach dem Beitrag Adolf Butenandts.

The 1939 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and later President of the Max Planck Society Adolf Butenandt has been increasingly exposed to criticism in recent years. One far-reaching accusation against him is his postulated participation in the human experiments executed by the SS-physician Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It concerns a project initiated by anthropologist Otmar von Verschuer in 1943. For this, Verschu-ER Obtained blood samples from his assistant Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp. When methodological problems occurred in the project Butenandt helped Verschuer. According to the reconstruction of geneticist Benno Müller-Hill the research project included lethal human experiments: Mengele had selectively infected concentration camp detainees with tuberculosis to observe their racially conditioned resistibility against that disease, he claims. This reconstruction, however, contradicts other sources. Therefore an alternative reconstruction is offered here. According to that, the project represented a large-scale attempt of serological race diagnosis in man. Human experiments are not plausible for this project. Yet it is clearly connected to race biological research and implementation.

The blood of the insane.

The history of serological investigations of the blood of the insane is traced from the initial such study in 1854 by a solitary Scottish asylum physician, who counted the blood cells of his lunatic patients under a weak microscope, to the January 2005 announcement by an international team of geneticists of the development of a genomic blood test that can differentially diagnose schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The story of the first claim of the development of a blood test for madness in 1912--the Abderhalden defensive ferments reaction test--is related in detail. Studies of the blood of the insane have followed four general methodological paradigms: the corpuscular richness paradigm (1854); the metabolic paradigm (c. 1895); the immunoserodiagnostic paradigm (1906); and the medical genomics paradigm (2005).

The effects of diseases, drugs, and chemicals on the creativity and productivity of famous sculptors, classic painters, classic music composers, and authors.

CONTEXT: Many myths, theories, and speculations exist as to the exact etiology of the diseases, drugs, and chemicals that affected the creativity and productivity of famous sculptors, classic painters, classic music composers, and authors. OBJECTIVE: To emphasize the importance of a modern clinical chemistry laboratory and hematology coagulation laboratory in interpreting the basis for the creativity and productivity of various artists. DESIGN: This investigation analyzed the lives of famous artists, including classical sculptor Benvenuto Cellini; classical sculptor and painter Michelangelo Buonarroti; classic painters Ivar Arosenius, Edvard Munch, and Vincent Van Gogh; classic music composer Louis Hector Berlioz; and English essayist Thomas De Quincey. The analysis includes their illnesses, their famous artistic works, and the modern clinical chemistry, toxicology, and hematology coagulation tests that would have been important in the diagnosis and treatment of their diseases. CONCLUSIONS: The associations between illness and art may be close and many because of both the actual physical limitations of the artists and their mental adaptation to disease. Although they were ill, many continued to be productive. If modern clinical chemistry, toxicology, and hematology coagulation laboratories had existed during the lifetimes of these various well-known individuals, clinical laboratories might have unraveled the mysteries of their afflictions. The illnesses these people endured probably could have been ascertained and perhaps treated. Diseases, drugs, and chemicals may have influenced their creativity and productivity.

[Blood culture update]. / Actualités sur l'hémoculture.

BACKGROUND: Blood culture is one of the most important bacteriological examinations with important clinical and therapeutic consequences. Blood cultures should be ordered in all patients with signs suggesting septicemia, endocarditis or severe infection (pneumococcal pneumonia, bacterial meningitis with bloodstream dissemination). Blood culture methods have evolved considerably over the last twenty years. After using manual methods for many years, read by non-standardized visual methods, the development of media with defined compositions and supplemented to allow growth of bacteria difficult to culture has been associated with the development of automatic blood culture devices. AUTOMATIC DEVICES: These devices have undergone rapid improvement. Semi-automatic devices (Bactec NR-660) were rapidly followed by completely automatic techniques, including four devices currently available: since 1989 Bio-Argos (Rio-Rad) and Bact/Alert (Organon-Teknika) and in 1993, Bactec 9240 (Becton-Dickinson) and Vital (BioMérieux). All these devices allow automatic detection of CO2 produced during bacterial growth. Automatic reading systems provide continuous output avoiding the need for invasive methods and thus the risk of contamination in addition to saving time. Potential application to achieve quantitative blood cultures for intensive care units is in the development stage. CONSEQUENCES: The reliability of these devices is well recognized and their contribution to severe bacterial infection is undeniable. There are certain limitations however related to material cost and the non-identification of the pathogen involved. Molecular biology techniques open new perspectives in this field. The evolution of techniques, definitions, and pathogenic approach to septicemia must be revisited as new infectious situations have been identified at the same time as new investigation tools resulting from considerable technological progress. New methods of blood culture have largely contributed to this progress.