Please note the following changes to the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s operations due to the observance of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

The table below lists the hours of operations for our Clinical Specimen Receiving department. We will have staffing to accept clinical specimens at both our 2601 Agriculture Drive and our 465 Henry Mall facilities.

As always, if you have an off-hours emergency, please call the WSLH Emergency Pager at 608-263-3280.

 

Earlier this year, patients began arriving in Chicago emergency rooms with unexplained bleeding. A link was made to the use of synthetic marijuana products, and the discovery of brodifacoum – a powerful anticoagulant and rat poison – was found to be the cause. This outbreak soon spread to Wisconsin and other states. In response, WSLH chemists developed a test to quantify brodifacoum in patients and added new information for diagnosis and patient management.

In this webinar, WSLH Chemical Response Coordinator Noel Stanton explains the history of the outbreak, the characteristics of this chemical exposure, and the unique role the WSLH is playing in the response.

Listen to the webinar: https://slhstream2.ad.slh.wisc.edu/Mediasite/Play/35e5ce9959ce494b9fb05d30442be8aa1d

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic that killed tens of millions worldwide. To commemorate the centennial, UW’s Wednesday Nite @ the Lab (WN@TL) hosted a series of talks this fall looking back at various aspects of the 1918 pandemic and looking forward into the future. WSLH Communicable Disease Division Director Dr. Pete Shult co-presented one of the talks.

100+ Years of Influenza Research at UW – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhBhfxylPFs
Bernard Easterday, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Chris Olsen of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine share 100+ years of influenza research at the University of Wisconsin

Influenza: It’s Not Only About Pandemics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKOqwv7J-dg
Pete Shult (WSLH Communicable Disease Division) and Tom Haupt (WI Division of Public Health) describe how 10 decades of wrangling with the antigenic drift, the antigenic shift, and the host-hopping of the flu virus have challenged public health agencies to invent and refine strategies to manage seasonal influenza and other emerging viruses.

UW and Madison and the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrkHq6A6DWs
Steve Oreck of the UW-Madison Department of History explores how the SATC (Student Army Training Corps) for World War I impacted the UW campus and Madison when the flu arrived just in time for fall semester 1918.

Cytotechnology Certificate Program Director Kaitlin Sundling, MD, PhD, won the American Society of Cytopathology Foundation’s “Shark Tank” Young Investigator Grant competition with her pitch – “Development of a Deep Learning Image Analysis System for Improved Cytology Screening.”

From a large field of applicants, proposals from 12 semifinalists were evaluated and 3 young researchers were chosen to present in front of the society at its annual meeting in November.

Kaitlin was awarded a two-year $50,000 grant to be used toward her research creating a machine learning prescreening algorithm for cytology.

In this video, Kaitlin preps for competition and explains her research idea — https://vimeo.com/297367355

Summary from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published a working paper showing that the agency’s On-Site Consultation Program generates national economic benefits of approximately $1.3 billion per year.

The OSHA On-Site Consultation Program offers no-cost and confidential occupational safety and health services to small and medium-sized businesses in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several U.S. territories with priority given to high-hazard worksites. (In Wisconsin, the WisCon program is part of the WSLH’s Occupational Safety and Health Division.)

On-Site Consultation services are separate from enforcement and do not result in penalties or citations. Consultants from local agencies or universities work with employers to identify workplace hazards, provide advice for compliance with OSHA standards, and assist in establishing and improving safety and health programs.

OSHA routinely performs rigorous economic analysis of agency regulations.  OSHA economists performed a similar analysis of On-Site Consultation, based on established economic principles and widely recognized values, such as the Value of a Statistical Injury (VSI).

The economists considered three distinct models for determining the economic contributions of On-Site Consultation:

• A one-time, one-year safety and health management program;
• A Hazard-reduction exercise; and
• An OSHA enforcement inspection.

Ultimately, the agency determined that a one-time, one-year safety and health management program most closely aligns with the services provided by the On-Site Consultation Program. Using conservative estimates based on the avoidance of OSHA recordable injuries and illnesses (not including fatalities prevented or prevention of delayed-onset illnesses) and looking at benefits to employers, workers’ compensation systems, and the workers themselves, OSHA developed the following breakdown of the benefits the OSHA On-Site Consultation Program provides to the national economy.

Annual Benefits of the OSC Program*

Covered Workers	1,260,932
Estimated Injuries per Year	37,828
Injuries Prevented by OSC Program Visits	9,457
Value of Avoided Injury per Injury	$77,000
Workers’ Compensation Cost per Injury	$30,526
Benefits to Workers from Avoided Injuries	$728,188,374
Benefits to the Workers’ Compensation System from Reduced Claims	$288,684,134
Benefits to Employers from Avoided Indirect Costs	$317,552,547
Total	$1,334,425,056

*Totals may not sum due to rounding

For the full paper, please see:  https://www.osha.gov/dcsp/smallbusiness/2018_Benefits_OSHA_On-Site_Consultation_Program_Economic_Analysis.pdf

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be closed on Thursday, November 22, for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Our Specimen Receiving departments will observe the following hours of operation for the Thanksgiving holiday:

 

 

 

Stories about people being hospitalized for and even dying from severe bleeding after using synthetic cannabinoids have filled the news since March 2018.

The responsible agent was determined to be brodifacoum, a powerful anticoagulant. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH) Chemical Response Program developed and implemented a quantitative test method for brodifacoum in blood, which is being used to diagnose and guide treatment length for patients.

The WSLH’s and Indiana State Department of Health laboratory’s involvement in these cases is featured in the Summer 2018 issue of the Association of Public Health Laboratories Lab Matters magazine – https://view.joomag.com/lab-matters-summer-2018/0966891001535548469/p16?short

Latest information on cases – Wisconsin Department of Health Services – https://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/chemical/synthetic-cannabinoids.htm

The WSLH Chemical Emergency Response Team received an award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national Laboratory Response Network (LRN) for their rapid response to the ongoing brodifacoum exposures – https://www.slh.wisc.edu/accolades-for-wslhs-chemical-emergency-response-team/

Legionella PCR testing has been discontinued. The PCR test is designed to detect Legionella spp. at the genus level. To best meet our program needs, we request that you submit a primary specimen for Legionella Culture or submit a Legionella isolate grown at your laboratory so we can also type the organism for epidemiologic purposes.

If you have questions, please call Dr. Allen Bateman at 608-224-4254.

WSLH Newborn Screening Laboratory Co-Director and UW Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Patrice Held, PhD, FACMGG, shares how the newborn screening program developed innovative online training modules that positively impacted the analytical testing process of the newborn screening program.

These learning opportunities for health care providers address timeliness and quality assurance concerns.

Watch the webinar

The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene’s campus lab building was bustling with “students” on July 26th and 27th as 12 grandparent-grandkid pairs “majored” in genetics and newborn screening as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Grandparents University (GPU).

GPU started at UW-Madison in 2001 and runs for two consecutive days for three consecutive weeks every July. Grandparents and grandkids choose from more than 20+ “majors”, earning a GPU “degree” at the end of their stay on campus.

WSLH Newborn Screening Laboratory Co-Director Dr. Patrice Held heard about GPU from a personal contact and got the ball rolling.

“I reached out to the organizers to learn details about GPU and whether our laboratory would be a good ‘major’ to consider for the program,” Patrice said. “They were very excited to have us participate! And I thought it would be a great opportunity for us as well.”

The Cytogenetics/Molecular Genetics and Newborn Screening Laboratories teamed up to create a “major” for Grandparents University. Because of the size of the group, grandparent-grandkid pairs were split into two groups, with one group visiting newborn screening and the other visiting genetics on Thursday afternoon and then switching for the Friday morning session.

According to WSLH Genetic Counselor Kimberly Anderson, “Our overall learning objectives were to: learn about how your inherited genes influence who you are and how your body functions; tour the cytogenetics and newborn screening departments at the State Laboratory of Hygiene and work hands-on with the chemists and cytogeneticists to learn how they use genetic information to help sick babies.”

Kimberly adds that for the genetics portion of the “major”, cytogenetics and molecular genetics staff walked the grandparents and grandkids through the steps of DNA extraction and gel electrophoresis. Students were able to extract (precipitate) their own DNA from their saliva and watch how different molecularly weighted colored solutions moved through an agarose gel. They also discussed how chromosomal imbalances can lead to genetic disorders, looked at human and mouse chromosomes under the microscope and learned the basic steps in chromosome identification and analysis.

For newborn screening, students had a mystery to solve – which disorder did their “baby” have?

WSLH Chemist Michelle Berry explains –

“In newborn screening (NBS) we created mock NBS reports with just numerical values. Our students’ job was to go into specific areas of the lab and learn about what diseases we screen for, how we screen for them, how the instrumentation works and what the treatment is for each disease we diagnose. We had:

• Cystic fibrosis mutation station where each grandparent-grandkid pair flipped the paternal coins to determine their own genetic mutation status
• Endocrine area where each pair developed their own biotinidase enzyme activity
• NBS specimen card receiving activity where each pair was able to number NBS cards and use the automated punchers to punch fake specimens for lab use
• Hemoglobinopathies area where pairs learned about gel electrophoresis and were able to read their own gels
• Mass Spectrometry area where pairs learned about phenylketonuria (PKU) and were able use automated pipettes
• SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficiency) area where pairs were able to see an automated pipettor in action

At the conclusion, every participant shared which disease their pretend baby was identified with and were invited to try a PKU formula that is used for supplemental nutrition by people that are diagnosed with PKU.”

Patrice said the newborn screening portion was definitely a team effort.

“Almost everyone in newborn screening took part in the GPU,” she said. “The ‘students’ rotated through each of the different sections. A chemist in each section described the work to the students, but the other chemists had to work ‘extra’ hard to cover all the testing for the days.”

WSLH staff who participated found the event to be a fun experience.

And a few days later Patrice heard from one of the grandparents –

“We are so very happy that we were able to attend the Grandparent’s University Genetics major this year! It was one of our favorite majors. And this was our last year to attend GPU, so we had a great finale! Every staff member was exceptional; the material was extremely interesting and well-presented (loved the hands-on opportunities); and learning about the services you provide and the research you do was an extremely rewarding experience. Thanks to all of you!”