2020 · Kidney research and clinical practice · open access
Remote monitoring using donor-derived, cell-free DNA after kidney transplantation during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic
Potter et al.
The finding, in our words
During the COVID-19 pandemic, kidney transplant recipients using remote home phlebotomy for donor-derived cell-free DNA monitoring showed stable risk stratification, with a decrease in the prevalence of indeterminate-risk cohorts. This demonstrates that decentralised blood sampling can maintain clinical validity for allograft surveillance while improving patient safety and compliance.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In this decentralised n-of-1 crossover trial of dapagliflozin in 20 adults with type 2 diabetes, remote collection of urine and capillary blood samples achieved 99.4% and 98.4% delivery success respectively, demonstrating that remote monitoring can reliably track individual albuminuria responses to therapy.
The study found that smartwatch-based adherence monitoring showed consistent concordance over time and may be more reliable than app or pill count methods in measuring treatment adherence in a decentralised setting. This supports the use of wearable devices as objective tools in patient-centric monitoring for decentralised clinical trials.
Huh et al., Clinical and translational science · source ↗
Noninvasive salivary measurements of creatinine, cystatin C and urea, and fingerstick capillary blood testing, can approximate gold‑standard laboratory results for kidney function. This could enable more frequent, home‑based monitoring to detect CKD progression and AKI episodes without the burdens of conventional venepuncture and laboratory processing.
Beshay et al., Current opinion in nephrology and hypertension (paywalled) · source ↗
Merck describes a digitally enabled, patient-centric trial initiative that combines outpatient PK/PD sampling with digital biomarkers and smart dosing technologies to improve exposure-response understanding and reduce patient burden, while acknowledging adoption challenges.
Dockendorf et al., Clinical and translational science · source ↗
A machine learning model called Remote Control was trained on 2685 blood samples to predict change due to instability, enabling accurate calibration of results to approximate the time zero value at collection. With calibration, unprocessed whole blood could be transported for up to 9 days under ambient conditions and temperatures between 3.4 and 47.4 degrees Celsius, achieving agreement with CLIA TEa between 98.1 and 100 per cent and expanding the catalog of tests available for at-home collection.
O'Meara et al., Analytical chemistry (paywalled) · source ↗