2024 · Journal of clinical microbiology · open access
Assessment of the performance of the plasma separation card for HIV-1 viral load monitoring in South Africa
Chimoyi et al.
The finding, in our words
Plasma separation cards showed high specificity (99.3%) but moderate sensitivity (87.5%) against EDTA-plasma for HIV-1 viral load monitoring at a 1,000 copies/ml threshold in a South African cohort. Despite favourable usability among healthcare workers, laboratory-reported technical difficulties must be addressed to enable reliable decentralised scale-up in resource-constrained settings.
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 commercial ELISA for measuring measles-specific IgG in capillary dried blood spots from children, finding 100% sensitivity and 96.8% specificity against matched venous serum with 92% overall agreement, then applied the method to 1,588 field-collected samples in Mexico and Nicaragua. The procedure was acceptable to surveyors and participants, showing that dried blood spots are a feasible and accurate means of assessing population immunity to measles in low-resource settings.
Colson et al., Journal of medical virology (paywalled) · source ↗
Dried blood spot sampling matched venous serum performance for islet autoantibody detection and was considered minimally invasive and convenient by parents and stakeholders, supporting its use for decentralised screening in home or community settings.
Faustini et al., Diabetic medicine : a journal of the British Diabetic Association · source ↗
VAMS microsampling found no significant difference from venous blood for tacrolimus in paediatric patients; samples were stable for 14 days, with average difference between paired at-home samples of 0.12 ± 0.94 ng/mL.
Zhao et al., J. Mass Spectrometry and Advances in the Clinical Lab · source ↗
Dried VAMS and DBS samples collected at home and analysed after a median of three days showed poor agreement with standard venous or capillary blood for HbA1c monitoring. In contrast, wet VAMS samples analysed immediately demonstrated excellent agreement, indicating that sample drying and delayed analysis compromise reliability for decentralised HbA1c measurement.
Verougstraete et al., Clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine (paywalled) · source ↗
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.