Everything we have published, newest first. Use the section links in the header to narrow by area, or the search box to look for a specific test, technique or term.
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CRP and ESR: Two Very Different Views of Inflammation
One test measures a protein directly and responds within hours; the other watches red cells fall down a tube and lags days behind. They are not…
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Flow Cytometry: Counting Thousands of Cells One by One
A flow cytometer interrogates cells individually at enormous speed, but the plot it produces only becomes an answer once a human decides where to draw the…
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Iron Studies: Ferritin, Transferrin and the Inflammation Trap
Ferritin measures iron stores and also rises with inflammation, which is why a normal ferritin can sit on top of genuine iron deficiency and hide it…
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How to Read a Supplement Certificate of Analysis
A certificate of analysis is either a traceable laboratory record or a marketing leaflet with numbers on it, and a handful of specific fields tell you…
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Supplement Certifications Compared: NSF, USP and Informed Sport
The seals on a supplement label are not competing grades of the same thing; each programme answers a different question and leaves different questions untouched.
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The Western Blot and Everything That Can Go Wrong
A western blot is six separate procedures chained together, and each one fails in a way that leaves a recognisable signature on the finished membrane.
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Vitamin D Testing and Why Labs Disagree on Normal
The same blood sample can return meaningfully different vitamin D results depending on which platform measures it, and the cut-off for deficiency is still argued over.
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Kidney Function Testing: Creatinine, eGFR and Cystatin C
eGFR is not measured. It is calculated from creatinine, age and sex, which is why muscle mass and the choice of equation can move the number…
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Heavy Metals in Supplements and How Labs Find Them
Plants concentrate what the soil offers, and minerals are mined from rock. Both routes carry metals into supplements, which is why testing exists at all.
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Cell Culture Contamination and How Labs Catch It
The contaminations that ruin published work are the ones you cannot see. Bacteria announce themselves within a day; mycoplasma and misidentified lines do not.
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Light Versus Electron Microscopy: Choosing the Right Lens
Electron microscopes see far smaller things, but the preparation kills the specimen. Choosing between the two is a trade between resolution and life.
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Liver Enzyme Panels Decoded: ALT, AST, ALP and GGT
Liver enzyme results are a pattern-recognition exercise. Which enzymes rise together, and in what proportion, matters far more than any single flagged value.
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Inside a Thyroid Panel: TSH, Free T4 and Free T3
TSH is not a thyroid measurement. It is the pituitary’s opinion about thyroid output, and understanding that resolves most confusing thyroid panels.
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Chromatography: How Laboratories Pull Mixtures Apart
Chromatography separates a mixture by making its components hesitate for different lengths of time. Everything else in the method is engineering around that one idea.
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Mass Spectrometry: How Laboratories Weigh Molecules
A mass spectrometer never touches a balance. It measures how ions behave in fields, and everything else on the report is inference from that.
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HbA1c: What Three Months of Glucose Looks Like
HbA1c is described as a three-month average, but recent weeks count far more than older ones, and several common conditions distort it substantially.
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Reading a Lipid Panel Beyond Total Cholesterol
The number most people focus on is the least informative one on the panel, and the LDL value beside it is usually not measured at all…
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CRISPR Explained for People Who Are Not Molecular Biologists
CRISPR is often described as molecular scissors. That metaphor explains the cut but hides the part that actually determines what happens to the genome.
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PCR Versus qPCR: What Real-Time Detection Changes
The two techniques run almost identical chemistry. The difference is when you look at the reaction, and that single change is what makes one of them…
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What a Complete Blood Count Actually Measures
A complete blood count is three separate examinations printed on one page. Here is what each number counts and which ones carry the most information.
