Concordance of Fingerstick and Venipuncture Sampling for Fertility Hormones
Burke et al.
The finding, in our words
Matched fingerstick capillary blood samples showed near-perfect agreement with venipuncture across anti-müllerian hormone, estradiol, FSH, LH, prolactin, testosterone, TSH and free T4, with correlations of 0.99–1.00 and minimal bias, supporting interchangeable use and enabling virtually painless at-home testing for fertility hormone assessment.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Capillary fingerstick sampling showed high correlation and agreement with venous sampling for serum AMH but with proportional bias, so it may improve access to testing yet should not be considered fully interchangeable without further validation.
Lavadia et al., Clinical and experimental reproductive medicine (paywalled) · source ↗
Home DBS sampling gave testosterone results that agreed well with venous blood in men on intramuscular testosterone undecanoate, but showed falsely high values in those using topical gel, likely from skin contamination. Patients preferred home collection for its convenience, suggesting DBS is viable for decentralised monitoring of injectable testosterone if patients are taught proper technique.
Olthof et al., Clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine (paywalled) · source ↗
Earlobe capillary microsampling of 100-250 µL found good agreement with venous draws for progesterone, concordance 0.911, and 17β-estradiol, concordance 0.919, across menstrual cycles, showing suitability for decentralised monitoring. However, participant-reported burden was not assessed, and further validation is required in elite athletes.
In 46 women under hormone monitoring at Columbia University Fertility Center, oestradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone and hCG measured on routine immunoassays from 400 to 600 microlitres of upper-arm capillary blood collected with TAP Micro Select agreed closely with paired venous results for every analyte, with correlation and concordance high throughout. It is the evidence that puts a self-collected sample inside the daily monitoring of an IVF cycle.
Lattin et al., Fertility and sterility (paywalled) · source ↗
This study found that dried blood spot samples stored at room temperature for four years correlated highly with serum measurements for testosterone and androstenedione, indicating that hematocrit adjustment may be unnecessary for serial monitoring in home-based self-sampling.
Desai et al., The Journal of steroid biochemistry and molecular biology (paywalled) · source ↗