Pre-exposure Prophylaxis Outcomes from a Multilevel Cluster-Randomized Trial Among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Tshwane, South Africa
Bonner et al.
The finding, in our words
In a cluster-randomised trial evaluating pre-exposure prophylaxis among adolescent girls and young women, dried blood spot sampling was implemented to measure objective HIV PrEP adherence and persistence over nine months of follow-up.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
The study found that although participants preferred patient-centric microsampling devices for home use, the agreement with venous plasma for measuring CRP and cytokines was inconsistent, indicating that further validation is required before these methods replace standard venipuncture.
Frequent dried blood spot sampling detected early changes in beta-cell function more effectively than mixed-meal tolerance tests or urine ratios, supporting its potential as a decentralised monitoring tool for clinical trials.
Dunseath et al., Diabetes care (paywalled) · source ↗
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.
Gurung et al., AIDS and behavior (paywalled) · source ↗
In a study of 46 perinatal nicotine users, dried blood spots and saliva were used weekly to measure reproductive hormones, finding that lower postpartum estradiol and greater peripartum declines in oxytocin were associated with increased nicotine craving and use. This demonstrates the feasibility of decentralised microsampling and remote surveys for longitudinal hormone tracking in vulnerable populations.
Allen et al., Drug and alcohol dependence reports (paywalled) · source ↗
The study found that coached dried blood spot collection was feasible for remote biobehavioural assessment of CTRA gene expression among Black women activists, with usable data from 28 of 29 participants at baseline and 27 at follow-up. Within-person increases in activist identity and search for meaning were associated with more favourable CTRA gene expression changes, though mean CTRA did not shift across the group over the two-month period.