madman
Super Moderator
Conclusions
The number and types of spills and contamination events in the clinical laboratory community are unknown and generally not reported. As such, we do not know if this was an isolated incident or something that might be occurring in other settings and laboratories. Clinical laboratory instrument contamination issues are not well described, and decontamination protocols from vendors typically reflect tube, probe, and bath cleansing but not surface cleaning per se. Additionally, processes for effective cleanup of different types of substances are rarely published. Indeed, this investigation involved establishing a monitoring technique and developing a cleaning protocol that would work with different types of surfaces in an open clinical laboratory space. With pharmaceutical company direct-to-consumer promotion of T replacement therapy and societal propagation of terms such as “low T,” a 10-fold increase in transdermal T prescriptions has been observed in the US between 2000 and 2011 (6, 7 ). The present report described an environmental contamination in our laboratory attributed to direct and/or indirect contact with topical pharmaceutical T. It is possible that similar increases in environmental T may be expected in other workplace and domestic settings around individuals using topical T therapeutics. Additional studies focused on environmental contamination related to topical steroids may therefore be warranted. This is particularly troubling given the difficulty we experienced in effectively cleaning our workspace. Vendors should consider revising package inserts for clinical laboratory assays measuring substances that are frequently administered as topical formulations to include warnings about the risks of instrument contamination by operators.
The number and types of spills and contamination events in the clinical laboratory community are unknown and generally not reported. As such, we do not know if this was an isolated incident or something that might be occurring in other settings and laboratories. Clinical laboratory instrument contamination issues are not well described, and decontamination protocols from vendors typically reflect tube, probe, and bath cleansing but not surface cleaning per se. Additionally, processes for effective cleanup of different types of substances are rarely published. Indeed, this investigation involved establishing a monitoring technique and developing a cleaning protocol that would work with different types of surfaces in an open clinical laboratory space. With pharmaceutical company direct-to-consumer promotion of T replacement therapy and societal propagation of terms such as “low T,” a 10-fold increase in transdermal T prescriptions has been observed in the US between 2000 and 2011 (6, 7 ). The present report described an environmental contamination in our laboratory attributed to direct and/or indirect contact with topical pharmaceutical T. It is possible that similar increases in environmental T may be expected in other workplace and domestic settings around individuals using topical T therapeutics. Additional studies focused on environmental contamination related to topical steroids may therefore be warranted. This is particularly troubling given the difficulty we experienced in effectively cleaning our workspace. Vendors should consider revising package inserts for clinical laboratory assays measuring substances that are frequently administered as topical formulations to include warnings about the risks of instrument contamination by operators.
