2021 · Practical laboratory medicine · open access
Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from dried blood spot samples with the Roche Elecsys Immunochemistry method
Fontaine & Saez
The finding, in our words
Capillary dried blood spot samples analysed with the Roche Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay on COBAS 6000 systems agreed with paired serum results in 98.9% of cases and remained accurate at 86.7% after 9 days, supporting their use for decentralised COVID-19 serosurveillance and large-scale screening.
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.
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 ↗
Dried blood spot sampling achieved high sensitivity and specificity for SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection with strong correlation to paired serum, enabling virtually painless, decentralised specimen collection in community and remote settings where venepuncture is difficult.
Catlett et al., Journal of clinical virology plus · source ↗
Capillary blood self-sampling showed near-perfect agreement with venous sampling for SARS-CoV-2 IgG detection, achieving a Cohen's kappa of 0.88. Samples remained stable at room temperature for seven days, and 38 of 39 participants successfully collected adequate volumes, supporting its use for decentralised serological testing.
In AML and CLL, 91% of VAMS venetoclax results fell within 20% of plasma after individualised haematocrit correction; in home sampling, 18 of 21 patients self-sampled independently and 76% of returned samples were analysable, which shows home microsampling is workable, though the authors ask for multicentre validation.
Levens et al., Clinical Pharmacokinetics (paywalled) · source ↗