Optimizing Dried Blood Spot Sampling for Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Ringeling et al.
The finding, in our words
Enhanced visual and textual guidance significantly improved the quality of dried blood spots self-collected by children and adolescents, increasing the proportion of acceptable cards from 47.6% to 86.6%, which supports the feasibility of home sampling for therapeutic drug monitoring.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
A systematic review found mixed economic evidence for microsampling in therapeutic drug monitoring; one study reported no cost reduction with DBS home-sampling, €688 versus €676, whilst another predicted savings up to 61%. The authors caution that more work is required to assess costs alongside clinical outcomes and optimise logistics for decentralised implementation.
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.
A review of dried blood microsampling for tyrosine kinase inhibitor monitoring, covering the analytical and clinical requirements for moving oral cancer-drug TDM out of hospital.
This mixed-method study demonstrated that 97% of parents successfully collected dried blood spot samples from their children, with 72% reporting the process was easy and 80% preferring home collection. The results suggest that decentralised self-sampling for therapeutic drug monitoring is feasible and can reduce stress for families managing paediatric epilepsy.
Guardian-collected capillary dried blood spots were feasible for home monitoring of lamotrigine, and for carbamazepine and valproic acid when conversion factors were applied, with only 4 of 190 comparisons risking a conflicting dose decision and negligible risk of patient harm. Levetiracetam DBS showed high variability against plasma and is recommended only for checking nonadherence, not for dose adjustment.