Clinical Analisys - Immunology unit

The Immunology  Unit offers support to the various professionals from different medical specialities in the diagnosis, monitoring and progress of different diseases, including those of auto-immune, infectious, haemato-oncological, rheumatic and immunodeficiency origin.

In the area of infectious serology, this Unit has many decision-making algorithms used to facilitate discrimination between current/recent infections and the presence of residual antibodies (immunity), particularly in the case of pregnancy-related serologies. The Unit has available to it different analysis methods for the same test in order to offer a better understanding of the result.

In the auto-immunity field, there is a wide-ranging catalogue of tests covering from non-specific organism antibodies to multiple specific antigens. The presence of antibodies as opposed to organ-specific tissular antigens is tested using immuno-indirect fluorescence on Hep2 cells, Crithidia Luciliae or tissue preparations, reserving ELISA, RIA and Immunoblot techniques for detecting antibodies as opposed to specific antigens.

In the immunodeficiency and haemato-oncological disease field, blood cell phenotyping techniques converge with quantification of lymph cells, immunoglobulins, additional factors and plasma protein.