Fully automated therapeutic drug monitoring of anti-epileptic drugs making use of dried blood spots
Velghe et al.
The finding, in our words
The authors developed and validated a fully automated dried blood spot method for monitoring four anti-epileptic drugs and a metabolite. Accuracy and precision were within acceptable limits, samples were stable for at least one month at room temperature, and haematocrit effects were limited, demonstrating suitability for remote therapeutic drug monitoring in resource-limited settings.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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.
Levens et al., Clinical Pharmacokinetics (paywalled) · source ↗
This review found that volumetric microsampling devices, such as Mitra, HemaPEN, HemaXis DB10, and Tasso-M20, overcome haematocrit bias, whilst Telimmune plasma separation cards enable direct plasma collection without centrifugation. These technologies support patient-centric, decentralised sampling, though the authors note that clinical validation remains limited across different drugs and patient populations.
Huhn & Scherf-Clavel, Therapeutic drug monitoring (paywalled) · source ↗
In matched clinical samples from rheumatoid arthritis, VAMS and DBS showed strong agreement for methotrexate polyglutamates (slopes 0.95-1.07; bias within -4.21% to 0.36%; SRCC ≥ 0.969), with up to 100% of total MTXPG results within ±20% limits; capillary microsampling agreed closely with whole blood but differed from red blood cells, indicating matrix-specific differences that must be accounted for when interpreting against RBC-based reference values.
Kocur et al., International journal of molecular sciences · source ↗
The study found a dried blood spot method for ustekinumab was linear from 3 to 12 mg/L with inter-day accuracy of 90.1 to 106%, enabling reliable capillary blood measurement for remote monitoring; the authors note the single-centre design.
The HematoCARD cartridge autonomously collects duplicate 10 microlitre dried blood spot samples from a single finger prick and shows good analytical performance for monitoring adalimumab, with accuracy between 91 and 111 per cent, linearity R squared 0.99 and coefficient of variation at or above 0.94 compared with serum reference and commercial DBS microsampling methods.
Van Hileghem et al., Analytical chemistry (paywalled) · source ↗