Department of Clinical Diagnosis and Laboratory Medicine

Clinical testing refers to all tests performed to diagnose and understand the severity of a disease. Clinical testing is essential for the correct diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases. Clinical testing can be broadly divided into specimen testing, which examines the components of blood, urine, etc., and biopsy (physiological function testing), which examines the body's functions, such as electrocardiograms and ultrasound. Clinical laboratory medicine is a field that examines normal body functions and changes in the body that occur during illness to find indicators of disease diagnosis and symptoms, and studies how to measure them. To achieve this, it also analyzes the causes and pathology of diseases. It is also a field that bridges basic medicine and clinical medicine, researching research to find simple and accurate measurement methods, as well as improving existing test methods to produce more accurate results in a shorter time.

In the clinical laboratory medicine course at School of Medicine, students are taught about the test items necessary for diagnosing diseases, how they change depending on the disease state, and how to measure them. In hospitals, clinical laboratory technicians are mainly in charge of clinical tests, but clinical laboratory specialists (doctors) manage clinical tests so that they are correct and give accurate values, investigate the cause in detail when values do not match the disease state, and add comments to the test results so that the attending physician can understand them, acting as a bridge between the doctor at the examination site and the laboratory.

We conduct a wide range of research, but the main theme of our department is "Adenosine-mediated control of inflammation and immunity." We are investigating the role of adenosine in diseases such as rheumatism, collagen disease, and cancer, and developing new testing methods and treatments. In addition, in our research on "mutated hemoglobin," we are studying how hemoglobin with a structure different from normal due to genetic mutations affects the body, and how it affects other test items.