Last data update: Sep 16, 2024. (Total: 47680 publications since 2009)
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Query Trace: Steinberg KK [original query] |
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Laboratory contributions to public health
Dowdle WR , Mayer LW , Steinberg KK , Ghiya ND , Popovic T . MMWR Suppl 2011 60 (4) 27-34 Alexander Langmuir, founder of the CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), was quoted in the early 1960s instructing incoming EIS officers that the only need for the laboratory in an outbreak investigation was to "prove their conclusions were right." Understandably, this was not well received by the CDC Laboratory Branch. However, Langmuir's point was not to denigrate the laboratory but to emphasize the power of an investigation based on a solid clinical case definition and established field epidemiologic principles. In truth, in 1960, when CDC assumed responsibility for publishing MMWR, the laboratory provided little added value in many investigations, except to confirm "what the etiologic agent wasn't." Existing diagnostic laboratory procedures for infectious and noninfectious diseases of public health importance were reasonably reliable but basic and laborious. For diagnosis of many diseases and conditions, no laboratory procedures existed. Since 1961, advances in molecular sciences, analytical chemistry, and technology have revolutionized the public health laboratory investigative capacity, capability, and specificity and have emphasized the importance of more independent laboratory research. The term "molecular epidemiology" is widely applied, and the number of diseases for which laboratory diagnoses are available today is substantially larger. This article describes the principles and practices of the state-of-the-art public health laboratory in 1961 and provides examples of scientific, technologic, and strategic advances since that time that characterize the still evolving public health laboratory of the 21st century. | | Browsing through MMWR, volume 10, week 1, January 13, 1961, provides insight into the public health laboratory of 1961 and the topics of most interest and visibility at that time. Subsequently, progress and contributions made by the public health laboratories are provided in a more detailed account by using several illnesses and conditions of public health importance as examples. They span both infectious and noninfectious arenas. Some were listed in the first MMWR summary, but some were not under consideration in 1961 or were yet to be discovered. |
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