Leukocyte Depletion in Dried Blood Spot Cards Enables Enrichment of Parasite DNA for Improved Sequencing
Tierney et al.
The finding, in our words
The Leukocyte Depletion Card enriched Plasmodium falciparum DNA 32.5-fold over venous blood and 36.6-fold over conventional dried blood spots from just 9 μL of fingerstick blood, delivering superior sequencing coverage for malaria surveillance in a Ghanaian clinic cohort. This haematocrit-independent microsampling device addresses a key limitation of standard DBS for decentralised molecular epidemiology.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Dried blood spots provide a minimally invasive, low-volume and cost-effective approach for measuring pollutants, genetic markers, clinical biomarkers and drug adherence in population studies, yet the haematocrit effect introduces a significant error in concentration assessment, meaning further validation is essential for decentralised diagnostic use.
McClendon-Weary et al., Current environmental health reports (paywalled) · source ↗
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 ↗
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.
Heughebaert et al., Clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine (paywalled) · source ↗
This study found that measuring thyroid-stimulating hormone via dried blood spots and a volumetric device showed high agreement with serum results, with classification accuracy exceeding 96 per cent. The volumetric approach demonstrated improved reproducibility and stability, supporting its use for decentralised thyroid function monitoring.
Bornikowska et al., Practical laboratory medicine · source ↗