Newborn screening is a public health success story, ongoing for 56 years. On the one hand, new treatment and laboratory testing options open up the possibility of expanded screening panels. On the other hand, testing laboratories and follow-up providers are generally under-resourced and straining to keep pace with growing workloads. But as our feature article shows, scientists are working diligently to improve the accuracy and precision of existing tests and to bring on new disorders, even as they continue the high-stakes work of screening tens of thousands of infants a year.

Here are just a few of this issue’s highlights:

• A Non-Conventional Matrix: Using Dried Blood Spots for Biomonitoring
• Rhode Island Leverages Agency Partnerships to Identify Contaminated Leachate
• APHL Closes Productive Decade of Work in Sierra Leone
• Boots on the Ground: A Lab Perspective on Hepatitis A Virus Outbreak Response
• APHL Makes Progress on Electronic Lab Reporting for Animal Rabies
• Using MicrobeNet to Enhance Biothreat Agent Detection
• The Laboratory District: Protecting the Nation’s Capital

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The post New Lab Matters: The promise and challenge of newborn screening in 2019 appeared first on APHL Lab Blog.