Comparison of Dried Blood Spots and Venous Blood for the Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in a Population of Nursing Home Residents
Meyers et al.
The finding, in our words
Dried blood spots collected by finger prick from nursing home residents and staff showed sensitivities of 95.0–97.1% and specificities of 97.1–98.8% against venous blood for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies, demonstrating reliable performance even in elderly people with reduced cutaneous microvasculature. This supports decentralised serosurveillance and post-authorisation vaccine studies because DBS can be obtained remotely and stored at room temperature.
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.
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.
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.