2020 · PLoS neglected tropical diseases · open access
Perceptions on the collection of body fluids for research on persistence of Ebola virus: A qualitative study
Kutalek et al.
The finding, in our words
The study found that while participants generally viewed body fluid testing as useful for knowing their health status, cultural and religious concerns created ambivalence about sampling, particularly for blood and semen. Ensuring privacy, confidentiality and ongoing counselling helped address these barriers, supporting the design of more acceptable decentralised sampling programmes.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In a pilot mixed-methods study of youth with HIV, mailed HemaSpot-HF kits enabled home-based dried blood spot collection that participants found feasible and acceptable, supporting remote viral load monitoring and a self-management model for decentralised care.
In a cohort of 62 participants evaluating home self-collection with the TassoPlus device, 38 returned samples, with 29% excluded due to insufficient plasma volume below 200 ΔL. Although viral load measurements in adequate samples correlated well with conventional testing (r = 0.800), the high failure rate and missed detection in low-volume viremic samples indicate that further technical refinements are necessary before clinical adoption.
In a feasibility randomised controlled trial with 28 adults aged 65 years, 62% successfully self-collected finger-prick capillary blood samples for influenza antibody and vitamin D measurement. While overall study procedures were acceptable, the capillary sampling method requires refinement before wider deployment in decentralised diagnostics for older adults.
A UK survey of 2,816 healthcare workers found that 74% preferred at-home PCR testing and 52% preferred at-home serological sampling over hospital visits; some reported blood-collection or kit difficulties, and the authors conclude that home sampling is acceptable and workable for keeping participants in long-running studies.
A study of older rural US patients found that 96 to 98 per cent of self-collected dried blood spot specimens were successfully analysed for HIV viral load, with high acceptability. However, concordance between self-reported and measured viral load was only 69 to 82 per cent, highlighting the value of objective decentralised microsampling over self-reporting.