At AACC Clinical Lab Expo, Quest Unveils Extensions to Women’s Health, Personalized Medicine Test
Press Release | August 2, 2011
Quest Diagnostics Inc. unveiled extensions to its women’s health and AccuType® pharmacogenetic test menus and gave eight scientific presentations and host six scientific speakers during the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo.
The extensions to the company’s women’s health menu feature Athena Diagnostics’ spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) testing menu, believed to be the most comprehensive in the diagnostics industry. The services, which include adult-carrier screening and pre- and post-natal disease assessment testing, are now nationally available for the first time to physicians, laboratory directors and other clients of Quest Diagnostics. The offerings also position Quest Diagnostics as the only national major laboratory to provide testing services to assess SMA disease severity based on Athena’s analysis of the number of copies of an SMA-associated gene.
Athena Diagnostics, which Quest Diagnostics acquired in April 2011, is a provider of neurology diagnostics and a pioneer in SMA testing, which it has performed since 1996. Prior to the acquisition, select Quest Diagnostics’ business units had offered Athena Diagnostics’ SMA testing services in select regions only.
The SMA adult-carrier screening test detects defects in the survival motor neuron (SMN) 1 gene, which determines an individual’s risk of passing SMA to offspring. The pre- and post-natal disease assessment tests identify the number of copies of the SMN2 gene, which affects disease severity.
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