2023 · Annals of clinical biochemistry · paywalled
Concordance in COVID-19 serology, bone mineralization, and inflammatory analytes between venous and self-collected capillary blood samples exposed to various pre-analytical conditions
Hosseini et al.
The finding, in our words
Capillary blood self-collection showed acceptable agreement with venous samples for vitamin D, C-reactive protein and alkaline phosphatase even after 36-hour delays, but calcium and phosphate levels were more affected by pre-analytical conditions. This supports decentralised serology and biomarker testing while highlighting analytes that need tighter pre-analytical control.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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 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.
Capillary blood samples collected by staff or self-collected by participants showed strong correlation and clinically acceptable agreement with venipuncture for influenza haemagglutination inhibition titers. The small differences observed were not clinically meaningful, and adequate sample volume was achieved in most attempts, supporting the feasibility of decentralised serological testing.
Self-collected capillary blood samples posted by standard mail showed high concordance with couriered venous samples for HbA1c, creatinine and lipid parameters, supporting their use for remote monitoring in diabetes management and screening.
In a cohort of 62 participants evaluating home self-collection with the TassoPlus device, 38 returned samples, with 29% excluded due to insufficient plasma volume below 200 ΔL. Although viral load measurements in adequate samples correlated well with conventional testing (r = 0.800), the high failure rate and missed detection in low-volume viremic samples indicate that further technical refinements are necessary before clinical adoption.