Acceptability and tolerability of and adherence to HIV preexposure prophylaxis among Toronto gay and bisexual men: a pilot study
Tan et al.
The finding, in our words
Daily oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis demonstrated high acceptability and adherence among high-risk gay and bisexual men when monitored by dried blood spot analysis, with no HIV seroconversions over one year but frequent sexually transmitted infections. The study shows dried blood spot testing can support adherence monitoring in decentralised prevention programmes, though renal function requires surveillance.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This review found that volumetric microsampling devices, such as Mitra, HemaPEN, HemaXis DB10, and Tasso-M20, overcome haematocrit bias, whilst Telimmune plasma separation cards enable direct plasma collection without centrifugation. These technologies support patient-centric, decentralised sampling, though the authors note that clinical validation remains limited across different drugs and patient populations.
The study found that quantitative dried blood spot sampling provided high clinical agreement for tacrolimus and creatinine monitoring, with patients rating the self-collection devices as user-friendly. These results support the feasibility of decentralised therapeutic drug monitoring for immunosuppressants.
This pilot study demonstrated that a fully remote web-based testing programme for sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections was feasible and acceptable overall, although participants encountered specific collection challenges with the dried blood spot component.
Dried blood spot collection proved feasible during parabolic flight, with seventeen of twenty volunteers successfully providing samples for caffeine pharmacokinetic profiling. The method yielded stable metabolic ratios between ground and weightless conditions, and participants reported high satisfaction, suggesting DBS could support therapeutic drug monitoring in remote or extreme environments such as long-term spaceflight.
Home DBS sampling gave testosterone results that agreed well with venous blood in men on intramuscular testosterone undecanoate, but showed falsely high values in those using topical gel, likely from skin contamination. Patients preferred home collection for its convenience, suggesting DBS is viable for decentralised monitoring of injectable testosterone if patients are taught proper technique.