Abstract “The 1st Turkish in vitro Diagnostic Symposium” was organized in İzmir between the dates 18–20 February 2016 with cooperation of Turkish Biochemistry Society Izmir Branch and Dokuz Eylul University Institute of Health Sciences. This article presents a collection of the subjects, recommendations and results included in the final report of the symposium. Symposium subjects were analysed under separate titles and evaluated together with results obtained from various reports on medical devices (MD) in the last decade. According to the final report, the subjects to be considered on preferential basis include “configuration of the websites of legal authorities, standardization and accreditation institutions in a way to access work on in vitro Diagnostic (IVD)”, “activation of university-industry cooperation”, “determination of national standards parallel to international standards” and “carrying out the statistics about IVD-MD in Turkey as immediate as possible”. Drawing attention to the fact that there is a requirement for competent man power for every-stage of IVD-MD lifecycle, it is recommended that postgraduate education programmes are founded to serve these fields. Consequently, this symposium enabled to determine the basic problems about the sector by bringing together the stakeholders related to IVD-MD field and to come up with an action plan in accordance with the recommendations.

Consumption of alcohol leads to oxidative stress in liver by inducing lipid peroxidation. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of carnosine (CAR) in alcohol-induced liver injury by biochemical and histomorphological evaluations. The rats were divided into four groups, namely, control group, alcohol (AL) group, CAR group and AL + CAR group. Three doses of ethanol (5 g/kg, 25% (v/v) in distilled water) were given by nasogastric catheter for twice-a-day. CAR (100 mg/kg) was given 1 h before the administration of ethanol using the same method. Levels of alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, myeloperoxidase and malondialdehyde were significantly increased in the AL group compared with control, CAR and AL + CAR groups. Glutathione level was significantly decreased in the AL group, while it was increased in the AL + CAR group. Immunoreactivity of caspase-3 and bax increased in the hepatocytes of AL group when compared with control and AL + CAR groups. Expression of bcl-2 was decreased in AL group than AL + CAR group. Under electron microscopy, dense mitochondria, accumulation of lipid, sinusoidal dilatation, vacuolization and decrease in the number of microvilli were observed in AL group, while these findings were markedly less in the AL + CAR group. In conclusion, pretreatment of CAR is effective for recovering biochemical alterations and morphologic damage in the liver of rats treated with ethanol.