Infection is about how parts of the body become infected or diseased. Immunity is how the body keeps itself healthy.
This page is about the work we do to understand more about infections and how to help your body to fight against them.
We deliver services for a variety of health care providers from Hospial Trusts and commercial organisations to General Practitioners for Merseyside, North Wales and parts of Cheshire. All departments hold unconditional Clinical Laboratory Accreditation. Please refer to our laboratory handbook which can be found in ‘Our Services’ for more information about our test portfolio.
The Directorate has an active research, development and innovation programme, working closely with our colleagues at the University of Liverpool to improve the quality of patient care.
We are constantly developing our diagnostic services as the needs of the patients and institutions in our region change. We are always interested to receive feedback and welcome any discussion about how services should be provided in the future.
Medical Microbiology & Virology
The Medical Microbiology laboratory provides an extensive clinical diagnostic and advice service. In addition to routine bacteriology we also provide mycobacteriology, mycology and parasitology services. We have an expanding molecular diagnostic service and are implementing the latest technologies including Bruker MALDI-ToF and Kiestra automation into our laboratory. We provide comprehensive management of complex patients over several hospital sites and actively support infection prevention and control activities at RLBUHT.
The Virology laboratories are recognised nationally as a Specialist Virology Centre providing high quality diagnostic services for screening and monitoring of viral infections. We are a centre of expertise in Clinical Virology with the only two Consultant Medical Virologists in Cheshire and Merseyside based here at RLBUHT. The laboratory has strong inter-departmental links and has recently taken on HPV testing for triage and test-of-cure as part of the cervical cancer screening programme for the area.
Immunology & Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics
The Clinical Immunology laboratory provides specialist laboratory services to assist in the diagnosis and management of allergies, immunodeficiencies, cancers of the immune system and autoimmune diseases. Clinics are held at Broadgreen Hospital for the investigation of adult allergy and immunodeficiency.
The Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (H&I) laboratory (or Transplant Immunology) provides a high quality service to the solid organ (renal) and stem cell (bone marrow) transplant programs at RLBUHT. Our test repertoire includes HLA typing of patients and potential donors for both transplant programs as well as specific HLA typing for drug interactions and disease associations, We also perform patient/donor crossmatching, HLA antibody testing and post stem cell transplant monitoring. We also work closely with our clinical colleagues giving advice on the management of solid organ and stem cell transplant patients.
A team of highly trained clinicians, healthcare scientists and dedicated support staff offer high quality, cost effective specialist services.
The Directorate of Infection and Immunity is located on the 7th and 8th floors of the Duncan Building.