PCR-based detection of cytomegalovirus in neonates and children, with emphasis on congenital and neonatal-screening cohorts: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Abusalah et al.
The finding, in our words
Real-time PCR on saliva or urine is accurate enough for neonatal CMV screening, with saliva giving the most consistent results. Dried blood spots were far less reliable: sensitivity dropped to 28 per cent in universal screening but rose to 95 per cent in high-risk neonates, showing that patient selection and specimen type strongly influence performance.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This review establishes that microsampling across blood, saliva, urine and stool matrices offers validated workflows and regulatory recognition for human biomonitoring comparable to conventional methods. It finds that these decentralised approaches enhance participant acceptability and enable screening in remote or low-resource settings.
This systematic review of 67 studies involving 34,739 kidney disease patients found dried blood microsampling was mainly used for immunosuppressant therapeutic drug monitoring and kidney function assessment. The approach offered cost savings, was preferred by patients for home self-collection, and provides a patient-centric opportunity to upscale longitudinal sampling and reduce participation bias in decentralised kidney disease research.
Lamond et al., Journal of clinical laboratory analysis · source ↗
This narrative review evaluates microsampling devices for therapeutic drug monitoring, concluding that techniques such as volumetric absorptive microsampling and dried blood spots offer reliable, less invasive alternatives to venous sampling when paired with high-sensitivity mass spectrometry, which supports implementation in routine clinical practice.
The review evaluates microsampling techniques including dried matrix spots, volumetric absorptive microsampling and capillary microsampling for SARS-CoV-2 bioanalytical applications, outlining their respective advantages and disadvantages to guide researchers and clinicians in pandemic-related diagnostics.
Protti et al., Journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis · source ↗
A 2025 review maps 28 microsampling devices, from dried spots and volumetric absorptive tips to upper-arm liquid capillary collectors, and names what a laboratory must control before their results are used: the haematocrit effect in non-volumetric dried samples, interstitial fluid from finger milking, volume, haemolysis and transport stability. Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic ask for the same two things, a device the patient can use safely and a sample fit for the test.