Engaging adolescents in research: Home self-collection of biological samples and health questionnaires
Leung et al.
The finding, in our words
In a cross-sectional study of 90 adolescents, 94 per cent provided at least one salivary sample and 89 per cent supplied a stool sample, with high adherence to study instructions, indicating that self-collection of these biospecimens is feasible and acceptable in this age group.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In a one-week virtual home clinic with 134 participants, 86 per cent returned saliva and 84 per cent returned stool, and most components were feasible and acceptable despite device and logistical challenges. This supports decentralised, patient-centric self-collection of non-blood biospecimens for research.
The study found that minimally invasive self-sampling at home was acceptable to most families, with saliva and hand sampling well tolerated across all ages and nasal sampling mainly accepted by adults and children over five. This supports the use of decentralised, patient-centric microsampling for long-term community surveillance of microbiota.
Participants preferred the Omnigene and Zymo oral swabs for comfort and ease of use, whilst the Omnigene device yielded the highest median bacterial DNA concentration compared to the other devices. The results indicate that the choice of self-collection device impacts both patient acceptability and DNA yield for oral microbiome analysis.
This pilot study found that mailing self-collection kits to endometrial cancer survivors was feasible and acceptable, whilst also observing that chemotherapy or radiation reduced beneficial vaginal bacteria compared to surgery alone.
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.