High risk injecting behaviour among people who inject pharmaceutical opioids in Australia

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.

A dried blood spot protocol for high-throughput semi-quantitative analysis of Epstein-Barr Virus VCA IgG and EBNA IgG serologies based on the Roche Elecsys system — Rubio-Acero et al., Virology journal · source ↗

• blood
• dried
• capillary
• dbs
• self-collection
• validation
• venous-agreement
• serology

Dried blood spot eluates showed high agreement with serum for SARS-CoV-2 IgG against Spike and Nucleocapsid (r≈0.96; qualitative φ≈0.98–1.0) and remained stable after 6–8 hours of storage, supporting use of capillary DBS for serosurveys and decentralised testing.

Dried blood spot eluates are suitable for testing of SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies targeting Spike protein 1 and Nucleocapsid protein — Guttmann et al., Biochemistry and biophysics reports · source ↗

• venous-agreement
• blood
• dbs
• self-collection
• dried
• serology
• capillary
• validation

Dried blood spot sampling achieved high sensitivity and specificity for SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection with strong correlation to paired serum, enabling virtually painless, decentralised specimen collection in community and remote settings where venepuncture is difficult.

Evaluation of serological assays for SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing from dried blood spots collected from cohorts with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection — Catlett et al., Journal of clinical virology plus · source ↗

• blood
• dried
• capillary
• dbs
• self-collection
• validation
• venous-agreement
• serology

Capillary dried blood spot samples analysed with the Roche Elecsys anti-SARS-CoV-2 assay on COBAS 6000 systems agreed with paired serum results in 98.9% of cases and remained accurate at 86.7% after 9 days, supporting their use for decentralised COVID-19 serosurveillance and large-scale screening.

Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from dried blood spot samples with the Roche Elecsys Immunochemistry method — Fontaine & Saez, Practical laboratory medicine · source ↗

• blood
• dried
• capillary
• dbs
• self-collection
• validation
• venous-agreement
• serology

Capillary blood self-sampling showed near-perfect agreement with venous sampling for SARS-CoV-2 IgG detection, achieving a Cohen's kappa of 0.88. Samples remained stable at room temperature for seven days, and 38 of 39 participants successfully collected adequate volumes, supporting its use for decentralised serological testing.

Self-sampling of capillary blood for SARS-CoV-2 serology — Brown et al., Scientific reports · source ↗

• blood
• liquid
• dried
• capillary
• dbs
• self-collection
• validation
• venous-agreement
• serology