Occurrence of Undiagnosed Diabetes Mellitus With Musculoskeletal Disorders of the Upper Extremity: Prospective Screening With Point-of-Care Haemoglobin A1c Fingerstick Testing
Heiting et al.
The finding, in our words
Point-of-care capillary fingerstick HbA1c testing in an orthopaedic hand clinic identified prediabetes or undiagnosed type 2 diabetes in 63% of patients with upper extremity disorders, many lacking primary care. This demonstrates decentralised screening in non-traditional settings can catch reversible metabolic disease and optimise surgical outcomes.
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 ↗
Guidance on capillary-to-plasma conversion: method- and analyte-specific clinical validation with paired capillary–venous samples before reporting plasma-equivalent results.
Boffel et al., Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (paywalled) · source ↗
In four crew members, capillary volumetric absorptive microsampling caught altered acetaminophen pharmacokinetics in flight: Cmax rose to 43,300 ng/mL from 9,110 before flight and clearance fell to 3,890 mL/h from 16,200, pointing to toxicity risk at standard dosing; four people only, but a case for microsampling where no clinic can reach.
Mampre et al., Journal of clinical pharmacology · source ↗
At-home volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) for anti-seizure medicines was feasible and reliable, with strong correlations to clinic VAMS and low bias for lacosamide, lamotrigine and levetiracetam; quantitative dried blood spot (qDBS) was a reliable alternative in the ambulatory setting, though older age reduced sampling quality.
Cancellerini et al., Epilepsia (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 ↗