Elevation of corticosterone and 17OH progesterone in extremely preterm infants and clinical implications
Kessel et al.
The finding, in our words
Analysis of dried blood spots from 813 newborns demonstrated that extremely preterm infants have markedly elevated corticosterone and 17-hydroxyprogesterone, with the latter showing the strongest inverse correlation with gestational age, indicating these precursors better reflect adrenal immaturity than cortisol alone. This validates DBS as a practical tool for guiding postnatal steroid therapy in preterm infants by helping clinicians distinguish physiological adrenal immaturity from true insufficiency.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In a study of 46 perinatal nicotine users, dried blood spots and saliva were used weekly to measure reproductive hormones, finding that lower postpartum estradiol and greater peripartum declines in oxytocin were associated with increased nicotine craving and use. This demonstrates the feasibility of decentralised microsampling and remote surveys for longitudinal hormone tracking in vulnerable populations.
Among 8007 neonates screened using dried blood spots, the study identified prevalence rates for congenital hypothyroidism (1:2002), congenital adrenal hyperplasia (1:2002) and G6PD deficiency (1:900), with abnormal results confirmed by venous sampling. This demonstrates the practical utility of microsampling for decentralised newborn screening and subsequent clinical management.
A newborn screening programme using dried blood spots detected classic 21-hydroxylase deficiency in 1 in 17,699 infants, with second-tier LC-MS/MS testing achieving a positive predictive value of 4.3. However, 23% of cases became symptomatic before results were reported, highlighting that timeliness remains a critical challenge for decentralised diagnostics.
Steroid hormones in dried blood spots remained within 15% of baseline for up to 14 days at 37C, and for up to 6 months at -20C, 4C and room temperature, with specific exceptions for androstenedione, 17-OHP, cortisone and cortisol. These findings support the use of DBS for decentralised hormone monitoring by defining storage limits that preserve analyte integrity during transit and storage.
In term newborns, measuring thyroid-stimulating hormone from dried blood spots before 72 hours of life is as accurate as later sampling and enables treatment of positive cases around 6 days instead of 8.5 days, without increasing false positives; however, home sampling delays laboratory receipt and yields more unusable samples than hospital sampling.