As a public health initiative, health care workers will draw blood from the newborn to determine potential abnormalities. In California, metabolic testing of newborns is mandated by law. By identifying and treating these metabolic diseases early, patients experience positive outcomes and the costs to the public are decreased. A recently enacted law in California proposes to expand the number of metabolic disorders from 4 to 21. The staff of the program are currently exploring the feasibility of also testing for these additional disorders.
Patient examples are available.
Often, investigators and laboratorians can piece together information derived from lab tests to create a case history, including circumstances surrounding the mysterious death, or unsolved cause of death, of a child. No one was able to determine the cause of her illness. The child's mother was poisoning her by administering large amounts of mercury, and was subsequently apprehended. In other examples, lab professionals have intervened to indirectly affect the lives of siblings of deceased children. In one case, a one-year old child died mysteriously at home in bed.