2018 · American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · paywalled
Evaluating minimally invasive sample collection methods for telomere length measurement
Goldman et al.
The finding, in our words
Telomere length measurements vary significantly depending on the sample type used, with Oragene saliva showing a moderate correlation to venous buffy coat, whereas Oasis saliva and dried blood spots did not yield comparable or adequate results for this assay.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
With Oragene DISCOVER self-collection, saliva SNP-array genotypes matched blood at 99.996% concordance; about 6% of samples failed on low yield, so an occasional repeat should be expected.
A US survey of 3,400 adults aged 62 to 90 collected up to 15 biomeasures at home, including saliva, dried blood spots and urine, with Salivette and Oragene among the devices used, which shows that several patient-centric sampling methods can run together in home-based research.
In AML and CLL, 91% of VAMS venetoclax results fell within 20% of plasma after individualised haematocrit correction; in home sampling, 18 of 21 patients self-sampled independently and 76% of returned samples were analysable, which shows home microsampling is workable, though the authors ask for multicentre validation.
Capillary dried blood spots, after haematocrit-dependent conversion, showed good agreement with plasma for 25-hydroxyvitamin D quantification, with 90 per cent of results within 20 per cent of plasma and substantial to almost perfect agreement in status classification, supporting reliable home self-collection for large-scale vitamin D monitoring.
The study validated a semi-quantitative protocol for Epstein-Barr virus serology using dried blood spots, demonstrating 98.8% sensitivity and 96.5% specificity compared to paired venous serum samples. The successful validation in a self-sampling cohort confirms the suitability of this patient-centric microsampling approach for large-scale seroprevalence studies and decentralised trials.