Accurate HIV viral load measurement in primary health care settings using the cobas® plasma separation card
Vubil et al.
The finding, in our words
The cobas® Plasma Separation Card demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity for HIV viral load from both venous and capillary blood, with misclassification rates under 1% compared with 5.9% for dried blood spots. This enables accurate decentralised HIV monitoring in primary care without requiring plasma centrifugation or cold chain transport.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
The study validated a semi-quantitative protocol for Epstein-Barr virus serology using dried blood spots, demonstrating 98.8% sensitivity and 96.5% specificity compared to paired venous serum samples. The successful validation in a self-sampling cohort confirms the suitability of this patient-centric microsampling approach for large-scale seroprevalence studies and decentralised trials.
Capillary samples collected using dried blood spots and Mitra microsamplers showed strong agreement with venous plasma for quantifying IgG antibodies against most vaccine-preventable diseases. Sensitivity was high for the majority of pathogens, though the study noted that antibody stability declined at room temperature over time, favouring cold storage for longer durations.
Ombati et al., Scientific reports (paywalled) · source ↗
Dried blood spot eluates showed high agreement with serum for SARS-CoV-2 IgG against Spike and Nucleocapsid (r≈0.96; qualitative φ≈0.98–1.0) and remained stable after 6–8 hours of storage, supporting use of capillary DBS for serosurveys and decentralised testing.
Guttmann et al., Biochemistry and biophysics reports · source ↗
The study demonstrated that qPCR-based epigenetic immune cell counting from capillary dried blood spots agreed with venous blood and conventional flow cytometry in healthy donors, and then identified lymphopenia, neutrophilia and a lowered lymphocyte-to-neutrophil ratio in 103 COVID-19 patients versus 113 healthy controls, with naive B cell frequency tracking disease severity, suggesting that filter-paper blood collection could enable remote immune monitoring in home-isolated patients.
The Ser-Col dried blood device with automated elution matched plasma gold-standard results for HIV and showed comparable performance to conventional DBS for HBV, HCV and syphilis across 378 miners at remote sites in French Guiana, with full HIV concordance and 87 per cent sensitivity for treponemal antibodies, supporting automated dried blood testing for large-scale infectious disease screening in remote populations.
Pisoni et al., Acta tropica (paywalled) · source ↗