Gender Minority Stress, Support, and Inflammation in Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Youth
McQuillan et al.
The finding, in our words
The study found that adding dried blood spot collection to measure C-reactive protein was feasible and acceptable among transgender and gender-nonconforming youth aged 9 to 20 attending a clinical service, and that a composite of greater gender-based stress with lower support was associated with higher inflammation, though no individual stress or support subscale reached statistical significance.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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.
The study found that although participants preferred patient-centric microsampling devices for home use, the agreement with venous plasma for measuring CRP and cytokines was inconsistent, indicating that further validation is required before these methods replace standard venipuncture.
Frequent dried blood spot sampling detected early changes in beta-cell function more effectively than mixed-meal tolerance tests or urine ratios, supporting its potential as a decentralised monitoring tool for clinical trials.
In a 20-person proof-of-concept pilot among veterans with HIV, remote self-collection of dried blood spots for phosphatidylethanol monitoring was feasible and acceptable, with high return and analysis rates and positive feedback; a small first step toward decentralised alcohol biomarker monitoring rather than proof of it.
Self-collected dried blood spots from 40 healthy participants arrived intact and yielded good-quality DNA, with most immune and epigenetic biomarkers remaining stable for up to six weeks at room temperature. The study confirms that minimally invasive dried blood and plasma spot sampling is feasible for scalable, longitudinal biomolecular surveillance in occupational health settings.