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<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></BODY></HTML>