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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Negative reagent controls are supposed to be
consistently negative. That's the point!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The notion of not performing negative reagent
controls on patient samples for IHC, because they have always been consistently
negative in the past, is equivalent to the equally bizarre notion of
removing the airbags, seat belts, child restraints and other safety
equipment from your automobile, because you have not yet had an accident and
have therefore never used them.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Bryan Hewlett</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Consultant Technologist</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>QMP-LS</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=vermast@rogers.com href="mailto:vermast@rogers.com">vermast</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu
href="mailto:histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu">histonet@lists.utsouthwestern.edu</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, October 08, 2003 4:56
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Histonet] negative IHC
controls</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I would like to get a feel for how many out there
are running negative control slides for IHC. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In our lab we do just a handful of antibodies and
initially I had been running a negative control slide with each patient slide.
After much discussion with our pathologists, we decided to omit these
negatives (which were conistently negative) and continue to just run a
positive control with each primary antibody for the run. We use the Dako
autostainer and prediluted primaries. The decision to stop running
negatives also coincided with Dako's decision to sell the negative control
sera separately from the primaries (they used to come packaged
together). Perhaps I assumed that discontinuing to pair these reagents
together meant that few labs were using the negatives.</FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></DIV></FONT>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Anyhow, after having reviewed the last QMPLS
(Canada) survey committee comments, I believe the committe would like a
negative control run with each patient tissue slide in order to evaluate
background (they have used NCCLS guide pages as reference).
Incidentally we weren't a part of the survey due to a
technicality.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Any help or advice would be
appreciated.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>L. Vermast</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Stratford,
Ont.</FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>