This review evaluates established and emerging capillary blood sampling techniques, comparing factors such as wound geometry and patient comfort, and identifies microneedles as a promising option for paediatric care because they can obtain samples virtually painlessly.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Dried blood spot sampling matched venous serum performance for islet autoantibody detection and was considered minimally invasive and convenient by parents and stakeholders, supporting its use for decentralised screening in home or community settings.
In 91 children and adults, capillary C-peptide taken with the TAP device matched venous sampling with 100% sensitivity and specificity for a clinically relevant level, 200 pmol/L or above, with r = 0.996. 63% preferred it to a needle against 7% who preferred the needle, and same-day bruising was 5.5% versus 34.8% after a venous draw.
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.
Plasma separation cards showed high specificity (99.3%) but moderate sensitivity (87.5%) against EDTA-plasma for HIV-1 viral load monitoring at a 1,000 copies/ml threshold in a South African cohort. Despite favourable usability among healthcare workers, laboratory-reported technical difficulties must be addressed to enable reliable decentralised scale-up in resource-constrained settings.
VAMS microsampling found no significant difference from venous blood for tacrolimus in paediatric patients; samples were stable for 14 days, with average difference between paired at-home samples of 0.12 ± 0.94 ng/mL.