Defining the Healthy Infant Metabolome: Liquid Chromatography Tandem-Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Dried Blood Spot Extracts from the Prospective Research on Early Determinants of Illness and Children's Health Trajectories Birth Cohort Study
Schleif et al.
The finding, in our words
Schleif and colleagues validated a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method to quantify 30 metabolites from dried plasma spots collected from healthy infants, establishing normal newborn reference ranges. This demonstrates that dried-spot microsampling can reliably support metabolic screening in decentralised paediatric settings.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This review of 2022 to 2023 work surveys dried blood microsampling for targeted and untargeted metabolomic and lipidomic profiling, finding the approach viable across paediatric research, therapeutic drug monitoring, metabolite screening, biomarker discovery, sports supervision, clinical disorder studies and forensic toxicology. The authors note that dried blood spots and VAMS dominate the published literature over other volumetric formats, and argue that harmonising analytical methods would accelerate wider clinical adoption of microsampling as an alternative to conventional plasma or serum profiling.
Couacault et al., Analytical science advances · source ↗
This review confirms that dried blood spot sampling with mass spectrometry enables simple preparation and transport of blood for clinical analysis, supporting decentralised diagnostics from newborn screening to therapeutic drug monitoring. Emerging untargeted metabolomics and proteomics applications, plus novel on-paper preparation methods, promise to expand microsampling utility in remote and resource-limited settings.
Skogvold et al., Journal of separation science (paywalled) · source ↗
Volumetric absorptive microsampling showed better precision than dried blood spots and a metabolic profile closer to whole blood, with stable signalling lipids for 24 hours at room temperature but significant changes after one week unless stabilised, indicating feasibility for decentralised sampling with the need for storage strategies.
Thangavelu et al., Analytical and bioanalytical chemistry · source ↗
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
Untargeted metabolomic profiles from three blood microsampling devices aligned more closely with whole blood than with plasma, and all devices distinguished sex based on amino acids, lipids, and acylcarnitines. This validates that device choice can be tailored to the metabolites of interest for decentralised human biomonitoring.
Avella et al., Metabolomics : Official journal of the Metabolomic Society · source ↗