It’s World Pneumonia Day. Pneumonia is one of the leading infectious causes of death of children. To detect causative pathogens of pneumonia in children, altona supplies labs with real-time PCR assays.

The WHO has released its 2023 Essential Diagnostics List (EDL), a register of in vitro diagnostics (IVD), to support countries in making diagnostic decisions. Hepatitis E virus (HEV) has been added to this list, including a recommendation to use nucleic acid tests (NATs) like PCR assays to diagnose acute HEV infections. One of the mentioned PCR tests in the EDL is the altona RealStar® HEV RT-PCR assay.

The likelihood of transmission of vector-borne diseases in Europe is increasing. Especially dengue fever and West Nile fever but also Zika virus disease and Chikungunya become more important for public health authorities. altona Diagnostics provides different suitable CE-IVD marked RT-PCR kits.

altona has recently launched the FlexStar® CT & NG PCR Detection Mix 1.5 (RUO), our first product of the STI (sexually transmitted infection) panel.

altona Diagnostics invites you to the 25th Congress of the European Society for Clinical Virology (ESCV) in Milan, Italy, from August 30 – September 2, 2023. We are proud to participate with our 20 sqm booth No. 21, promoting our AltoStar® automation system as well as our broad real-time PCR test portfolio.

July 28 is World Hepatitis Day, one of WHO’s officially mandated global public health days. Every year over 1 million people are dying from a hepatitis related illness, although many of these deaths could be prevented by early detection and appropriate treatment. altona Diagnostics provides four different AltoStar® ready-to-use test kits for the detection of acute and chronic viral hepatitis via real-time PCR technology. A fifth AltoStar kit, for the detection of Hepatitis D, is currently under development.