Feasibility of a hybrid clinical trial for respiratory virus detection in toddlers during the influenza season

This study used home self-collected saliva samples to successfully monitor cytokines and cortisol in mothers and infants, finding that a community singing intervention significantly reduced salivary interleukin-6 levels in mothers with postnatal depression.

Community singing intervention reduces maternal salivary cytokines and enhances maternal-infant cortisol synchrony in postnatal depression: biological findings from the SHAPER-PND trial — Kirkpatrick et al., Brain, behavior, and immunity (paywalled) · source ↗

• dct
• cortisol
• self-collection
• pediatric
• hormones
• liquid
• saliva
• biomarkers

Worked case studies of patient-centric sampling deployed in pharmaceutical drug development: how sponsors have implemented it, rather than whether it is possible.

Case Studies on the Use of Patient-centric Sampling for Clinical Studies in Pharmaceutical Drug Development — Patel et al., The AAPS Journal (paywalled) · source ↗

• dct
• venous-agreement
• blood
• self-collection
• pediatric
• validation
• biomarkers

A study of 292 patients found that the slopes of home-collected stimulated dried blood spot C-peptide levels over six months predicted 12-month venous mixed-meal tolerance test results, P<0.001. This shows decentralised microsampling can monitor beta-cell function, though further validation is required to confirm its reliability and broader applicability.

Early Detection of β-Cell Decline Using Home Dried Blood Spot C-Peptide Levels in New-Onset Type 1 Diabetes — Hendriks et al., Diabetes care (paywalled) · source ↗

• dct
• venous-agreement
• blood
• dbs
• self-collection
• dried
• pediatric
• biomarkers

In at-home and trial settings, a wet capillary device reliably collected a median ~450 µL with a 4.4% failure rate; 88% of adults preferred self-collection over venipuncture, with lower pain.

Feasibility, acceptability and safety of a device for self-collecting capillary blood in clinical trials — Dasari et al., PLOS ONE · source ↗

• dct
• acceptability
• blood
• self-collection
• capillary
• pediatric
• liquid
• validation

Adolescents collecting blood microsamples at home achieved varying success rates across six devices, with Minicollect tubes performing poorest. The confirmation that visual inspection alone was insufficient, by analytical variability, underscores the need for robust quality assessment before deploying any device in decentralised trials.

Self-Sampling by Adolescents at Home: Assessment of the Feasibility to Successfully Collect Blood Microsamples by Inexperienced Individuals — Boffel et al., The AAPS journal (paywalled) · source ↗

• blood
• liquid
• dried
• capillary
• vams
• dbs
• neoteryx-mitra
• self-collection
• acceptability
• pediatric
• dct