Accu Reference Medical Lab adds a xTAG® Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel (GPP) to its lineup of highly sensitive, rapid response diagnostic tests.

Diarrhea disease strikes more than two billion times globally each year and is a leading cause of child morbidity and mortality worldwide (1). 80% of pathogens are not identified, which leads to improper use of antibiotics and poor patient care. In the United States alone, 99 million cases of GI infection occur annually, leading to over 250,000 hospitalizations (2) and 17,000 deaths(3), inflicting a significant toll on the healthcare system.

Diarrhea can be caused by wide range of bacterial, viral, and/or parasitic pathogens. Conventional culture based diagnosis has many issues including highly variable, insensitive, labor-intensive and 24 hours turnaround time for final results. Recently, multiplex real-time PCR based diagnosis has been highlighted because of many advantages such as simultaneous detection of wide range of GI pathogens, fast turnaround time and high reproducibility combined with automatic platforms.
xTAG GPP simultaneously detects 14 common viral, bacterial, and parasitic causative pathogens from a single patient sample:

• Campylobacter
• Clostridium difficile toxin A/B
• Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157
• Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) LT/ST
• Salmonella
• Shigella
• Shiga-like Toxin producing E. coli (STEC) stx 1/stx 2
• Vibrio cholerae, cholera toxin gene (ctx)
• Adenovirus 40/41
• Norovirus
• Rotavirus A
• Cryptosporidium
• Entamoeba histolytica
• Giardia

By testing for greater than 90% of the causative pathogens of infectious gastroenteritis in a single test, clinicians can more quickly identify and treat the causative agent. Additionally co-infections can be more easily identified.

About Accu Reference Medical Lab
Accu Reference Medical Lab, LLC is located in Linden, NJ. Accu Reference Medical Lab operates as an independent high complexity CLIA-certified clinical laboratory providing advanced multiplex molecular diagnostic services to assist healthcare providers in the detection of infectious disease. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.accureference.com

About Luminex Corporation
Luminex is committed to applying its passion for innovation toward creating breakthrough solutions to improve health and advance science. The company is transforming global healthcare and life-science research through the development, manufacturing and marketing of proprietary instruments and assays utilizing xMAP® open-architecture multi-analyte platform, MultiCode® real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and multiplex PCR-based technologies, that deliver cost-effective rapid results to clinicians and researchers. For further information on Luminex Corporation and the latest advances in multiplexing using award winning technology, please visit http://www.luminexcorp.com/.

References:
1) http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs330/en/index.html
2) http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/medicalpubs/diseasemanagement/gastroenterology/acute-diarrhea/
3) http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0314_gastroenteritis.html