Painless, needle-free capillary blood collection for fertility hormone monitoring
Lattin et al.
The finding, in our words
In 46 women under hormone monitoring at Columbia University Fertility Center, oestradiol, LH, FSH, progesterone and hCG measured on routine immunoassays from 400 to 600 microlitres of upper-arm capillary blood collected with TAP Micro Select agreed closely with paired venous results for every analyte, with correlation and concordance high throughout. It is the evidence that puts a self-collected sample inside the daily monitoring of an IVF cycle.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Earlobe capillary microsampling of 100-250 µL found good agreement with venous draws for progesterone, concordance 0.911, and 17β-estradiol, concordance 0.919, across menstrual cycles, showing suitability for decentralised monitoring. However, participant-reported burden was not assessed, and further validation is required in elite athletes.
Capillary fingerstick sampling showed high correlation and agreement with venous sampling for serum AMH but with proportional bias, so it may improve access to testing yet should not be considered fully interchangeable without further validation.
Home DBS sampling gave testosterone results that agreed well with venous blood in men on intramuscular testosterone undecanoate, but showed falsely high values in those using topical gel, likely from skin contamination. Patients preferred home collection for its convenience, suggesting DBS is viable for decentralised monitoring of injectable testosterone if patients are taught proper technique.
A head-to-head of four upper-arm capillary devices, including TAP Micro Select, versus fingerstick and venous: experience and performance varied by device with none clearly superior, while analyte correlations with venous were similar across all.
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.