2025 · Scandinavian journal of clinical and laboratory investigation · paywalled
Self-sampling of capillary blood for safety monitoring of DMARD therapy in patients with rheumatic disease: a feasibility and method-comparison study
Adelhelm et al.
The finding, in our words
Self-collected capillary samples showed good agreement with venous samples for most safety monitoring parameters in patients with rheumatic disease, although platelet counts were less reliable and haemolysis affected some biochemistry results. Patients found the self-sampling process easy and virtually painless, suggesting it is a feasible option for decentralised monitoring.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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.
This meta-analysis found strong agreement between self-collected capillary blood and venous samples for laboratory results. Capillary sampling was associated with significantly lower pain scores than venipuncture, particularly when using upper arm devices rather than fingerprick methods.
The study found excellent agreement between hCG levels measured in remotely collected capillary blood and standard venous samples, with a near-perfect correlation. This demonstrates that remote self-collection is a feasible and acceptable alternative for serial pregnancy monitoring, reducing the need for clinic visits.
Capillary finger prick sampling at home showed close agreement with venous sampling for measuring infliximab, vedolizumab and CRP, with no systematic bias and high patient tolerability and practicality, supporting decentralised monitoring of biologic therapy in IBD.
This review of remote HbA1c testing via capillary blood microsampling finds that both dried and liquid formats can produce results comparable to venous sampling when collection, stability and extraction are properly validated. It matters because self-collected microsamples could enable decentralised diabetes monitoring and telemedicine, but heterogeneity in study designs and methods must be resolved before reliable implementation.