Use of Dried Capillary Blood Sampling for Islet Autoantibody Screening in Relatives: A Feasibility Study
Bingley et al.
The finding, in our words
Dried capillary blood spot screening correctly identified 95.5% of relatives with multiple islet autoantibodies and 98.6% of those without, and 60% of participants favoured initial home fingerstick screening with clinic visits only if autoantibodies were found.
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 quantitative dried blood spot sampling provided high clinical agreement for tacrolimus and creatinine monitoring, with patients rating the self-collection devices as user-friendly. These results support the feasibility of decentralised therapeutic drug monitoring for immunosuppressants.
Home DBS sampling gave testosterone results that agreed well with venous blood in men on intramuscular testosterone undecanoate, but showed falsely high values in those using topical gel, likely from skin contamination. Patients preferred home collection for its convenience, suggesting DBS is viable for decentralised monitoring of injectable testosterone if patients are taught proper technique.
Dried blood spot sampling matched venous serum performance for islet autoantibody detection and was considered minimally invasive and convenient by parents and stakeholders, supporting its use for decentralised screening in home or community settings.
Older adults achieved 98% adherence when self-collecting dried blood spots at home for inflammatory markers, with 97% of samples yielding valid results. Test-retest reliability was good (ICCs 0.70–0.76) and correlation with venous blood was strong (r=0.60–0.99), demonstrating that remote capillary sampling is a feasible and valid method for decentralised assessment of inflammation in older adults.
VAMS microsampling found no significant difference from venous blood for tacrolimus in paediatric patients; samples were stable for 14 days, with average difference between paired at-home samples of 0.12 ± 0.94 ng/mL.