Safe threshold of capillary blood glucose for predicting early future neonatal hypoglycaemia in babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus, an observational, retrospective cohort study
Park et al.
The finding, in our words
A capillary blood glucose threshold of 2.6 mmol/L measured before the second feed predicted neonatal hypoglycaemia within 24 hours with an area under the ROC curve of 0.96. This could allow 60 per cent of babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes to avoid extended inpatient monitoring, enabling earlier discharge and home-based care.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
This study validated a method requiring only 10 microlitres of serum and found high agreement between fingerstick capillary samples and venous serum for monitoring twelve antibiotics. The results suggest capillary serum sampling is a feasible, minimally invasive alternative that avoids the haematocrit effect associated with whole blood microsampling.
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.
In at-home and trial settings, a wet capillary device reliably collected a median ~450 µL with a 4.4% failure rate; 88% of adults preferred self-collection over venipuncture, with lower pain.
Adolescents collecting blood microsamples at home achieved varying success rates across six devices, with Minicollect tubes performing poorest. The confirmation that visual inspection alone was insufficient, by analytical variability, underscores the need for robust quality assessment before deploying any device in decentralised trials.
Boffel et al., The AAPS journal (paywalled) · source ↗
The paper records that the TAP II devices used for the infant draws were provided by YourBio Health, and that capillary serum was collected from babies as young as two months: the smallest patients sampled, without a heel prick or a venepuncture.