Stability of inflammation markers in human blood collected using volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) under typical laboratory storage temperatures
McMahon et al.
The finding, in our words
Room temperature storage of dried blood on VAMS devices caused significant losses in 13 of 21 cytokine analytes after five months compared to storage at 4 °C. Storing devices at 4 °C or colder preserved the majority of tested cytokines, demonstrating that cold storage is essential for reliable longitudinal cytokine profiling in decentralised studies.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Researchers successfully validated an analytical method for measuring creatinine across plasma and volumetric absorptive microsampling devices, demonstrating strong correlation between conventional plasma and dried microsamples. This provides a reliable, patient-centric approach for monitoring kidney function remotely during transplant follow-up.
An optimised VAMS workflow for blood proteomics increased protein identifications 4-fold in plasma and 2.1-fold in whole blood compared with liquid processing, with mean CVs below 11%, and whole blood showed greater robustness and storage stability at room temperature for up to 14 days. This enables reliable patient-centric microsampling for longitudinal biomarker studies.
Untargeted metabolomic profiles from three blood microsampling devices aligned more closely with whole blood than with plasma, and all devices distinguished sex based on amino acids, lipids, and acylcarnitines. This validates that device choice can be tailored to the metabolites of interest for decentralised human biomonitoring.
The study found that VAMS devices exhibited elevated background metal concentrations that often matched or exceeded levels found in venous blood, complicating trace element analysis. Although a cleaning protocol reduced some background noise, persistent contamination limits the current efficacy of this microsampling method for environmental biomonitoring.
A comparison of three patient-centric dried blood microsampling devices, paper DBS, Mitra and Tasso-M20, found strong to excellent correlation with traditional venous plasma for measuring branched-chain amino acids and ketoacids. Participants reported high acceptability and expressed a strong willingness to use these devices for decentralised self-collection.