Comparison of Microcapillary Blood Sampling Devices for Use in Anti-Doping
Lewis et al.
The finding, in our words
Capillary whole blood collected with RedDrop and Tasso+ devices showed excellent laboratory agreement with venous blood for complete blood count parameters except platelets, indicating that microcapillary sampling is a valid alternative to venepuncture for anti-doping athlete biological passport testing.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Capillary blood collected with Tasso+ devices demonstrated strong agreement with venous blood for primary Athlete Biological Passport markers (haemoglobin, reticulocytes, OFF-score, ABPS) with correlations ≥0.9, though platelet count showed poor concordance. Despite 44 of 209 samples failing pre-analytical checks mainly due to coagulation, high athlete acceptance and minimal pain support capillary sampling as a less invasive, viable alternative for decentralised anti-doping controls.
The homeRNA capillary blood collection and stabilization platform successfully captured lipopolysaccharide-induced inflammatory gene expression profiles. These transcriptomic responses were comparable to those obtained from traditional venous blood samples stabilized with RNAlater or PAXgene, demonstrating the platform's suitability for remote transcriptomic monitoring.
In pregnant women at high risk of gestational diabetes, the GTT@home capillary glucose device showed a small positive bias of 0.16 mmol/L versus venous laboratory OGTT, with 79.8 per cent of results in the lowest surveillance risk zone and diagnostic classification agreement in 54 of 61 cases, suggesting it could support home OGTT in pregnancy.
The True Dose TD-EPI kit demonstrated strong analytical agreement with venous blood for epirubicin monitoring, and the capillary samples remained stable for 72 hours at ambient temperature.
This UK consensus opinion outlines how clinical laboratories can validate self-collected capillary blood sampling against venous reference standards to achieve accreditation and facilitate the shift towards community-based patient care.