Direct measurement of cell-free DNA from serially collected capillary plasma during incremental exercise
Breitbach et al.
The finding, in our words
Capillary plasma obtained from fingerstick sampling allows direct quantification of cell-free DNA during exercise, demonstrating a strong correlation with paired venous blood samples and cardiorespiratory measures.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Earlobe capillary blood yields higher cell-free DNA concentrations than fingertip samples during exercise testing, with good to excellent repeatability. However, repeated earlobe sampling at rest artefactually increases cell-free DNA over time even without physical load, which may limit its utility for baseline measurements in decentralised diagnostics.
Fingerstick capillary blood achieved 100% concordance with venous blood for detecting circulating tumour DNA mutations in metastatic breast cancer after whole-genome amplification, although allele frequencies showed some variation. This provides evidence that less-invasive capillary sampling could enable longitudinal cancer surveillance and theranostic monitoring.
Gyanchandani et al., Scientific reports · source ↗
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.
Brown et al., Analytical chemistry (paywalled) · source ↗
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 POC haemoglobin device showed moderate correlation with laboratory values but was not accurate enough for routine monitoring; however, it had a high negative predictive value at the 7 g/dL threshold, meaning it can reliably rule out severe anaemia and may help avoid unnecessary transfusions and hospital visits if confirmed in larger studies.