Did you know that babies born in Oregon are tested for more than 45 developmental disorders within two days of birth? Moments after a baby enters this world, a few drops of blood are taken from its tiny heel and sent to a laboratory for testing—namely, the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory (OSPHL) in Hillsboro.
“I had three babies in Oregon, and I had no real understanding of what that simple heel prick in the first days of my babies’ lives meant until I started working at OSPHL,” said Akiko Saito, OSPHL business director.
Called “newborn bloodspot screening,” or NBS, the process is essential for detecting rare but serious conditions early on, such as Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Disease, severe immunity disorders, metabolic disorders such as PKU and MCAD deficiency, and more. Early detection of these and other conditions is vital for providers to order additional testing or administer life-saving treatment, sometimes within days of birth.
Established in 1963, Oregon’s NBS program was one of the first of its kind in the nation, universally testing 99% of the state’s newborns from samples taken by doctors, nurses, midwives, or other health care professionals.
“Our scientists make every minute count and screen hundreds of samples each day,” Saito said. “It’s one of the most important public health services we can offer—to set up every Oregon baby for a healthy future—and I have the honor of working with the scientists that make that happen.”
NBS is just one of the many things happening at OSPHL, which has been on the front lines of Oregon’s public health defense since 1903, making it one of the oldest public health programs in the state.
OSPHL also helps keep a lid on infectious disease outbreaks that may find their way into Oregon communities. When you see a news article that says, “CDC links spinach with three cases of Salmonella in Oregon, Washington, and Utah,” think of OSPHL’s work sequencing whole genomes. Through this cutting-edge technology, OSPHL scientists can trace back an E. coli strain, for example, by comparing its genetic makeup across a library of other active cases nationwide and link it to other outbreaks and a food source, even down to a specific manufacturer.
“It‘s similar to the ancestry tools used to find new relatives,” Saito said. “In this case we can find the source of contamination and target those areas to stop an outbreak and help people get much needed treatment.”
Foodborne infections—often from poor food preparation technique, contaminated meats or produce, or infected food handlers—are not uncommon. OSPHL regularly tests for culprits such as Salmonella, E. coli, Shigella, Listeria, norovirus, and more. Such diseases are also commonly linked with poor living conditions, as demonstrated by the recent increase in Shigella cases in houseless community members in Lane County. OSPHL receives and tests samples, then shares its data with OHA’s Acute and Communicable Disease Prevention (ACDP) program to ensure appropriate public communication and strategies to stop disease transmission. (See ACDP communicable disease data for shigellosis here.)
When you see headlines about rare disease outbreaks we don’t normally see in Oregon, think of OSPHL—the only laboratory in Oregon that can confirm identification of biological threats such as Ebola, anthrax and plague. When that happens, OSPHL coordinates with laboratories across the state so that when patients seek care at an Oregon hospital for Ebola, for example, the hospital’s lab will know what to do to support rapid testing to confirm diagnosis.
One of the rarest diseases to ever challenge the OSPHL staff: SARS-CoV-2, aka COVID-19.
“The pandemic sent OSPHL into overdrive, testing for COVID late into the night for months on end,” said Saito. “On top of ongoing newborn screening and all the other work our scientists do, they pulled together a group of labs from academia, hospitals, counties, and private industry all over the state to work together to navigate the completely uncharted waters of COVID.”
That critical collaboration to get through the pandemic became the Oregon Clinical Lab Consortium—a group of about 60 statewide labs that leaned on each other then, and now, continuing its work to keep Oregon’s lab system resilient in the future.
▶ WATCH VIDEO and learn more about the origins and future of the Oregon Clinical Lab Consortium.
The expansive work of OSPHL also includes testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), particularly for many underserved communities and local public health departments across the state, as well as drug-resistant organisms, such as a newly emerged form of tuberculosis (TB) that does not respond to traditional antibiotics.
OSPHL’s staff of more than 100 scientists perform about 5.4 million tests on 200,000 human specimens each year. The specimens come from 33 local health departments and 61 hospital and clinical labs in Oregon, as well as 3,000 individual medical practitioners across the state.
This week—the 50th anniversary of National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week, affectionately known as “Lab Week”—please join us in honoring and reflecting upon the largely unseen work performed by the team of laboratorians at OSPHL and clinical laboratories across Oregon and the country.
To learn more about OSPHL, visit their website.
