2017 · Diabetic medicine : a journal of the British Diabetic Association · paywalled
Use of self-collected capillary blood samples for islet autoantibody screening in relatives: a feasibility and acceptability study
Liu et al.
The finding, in our words
Self-collected capillary blood samples provided sufficient volume and quality for islet autoantibody testing in 98% of samples for GAD, IA-2 and ZnT8 and 84% for insulin autoantibodies, with upper 90% confidence bounds for unsuccessful collection of 4.4% and 19.3% respectively; despite 43% finding it uncomfortable or painful, 82% preferred home self-collection over outpatient venepuncture, supporting feasibility and acceptability of decentralised screening.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
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.
Two home-use capillary blood collection kits for HbA1c measurement produced results within 5% of venous values for 96% to 99% of samples across different shipping conditions. The kits were easy to use and yielded comparable results to venous specimens for both paediatric and adult participants, supporting their use in decentralised clinical research and care.
Dried VAMS and DBS samples collected at home and analysed after a median of three days showed poor agreement with standard venous or capillary blood for HbA1c monitoring. In contrast, wet VAMS samples analysed immediately demonstrated excellent agreement, indicating that sample drying and delayed analysis compromise reliability for decentralised HbA1c measurement.
This proof-of-concept study demonstrated that patients with inflammatory bowel disease could successfully perform capillary blood microsampling at home with high analytical success rates, and a majority preferred this decentralised approach over hospital venous draws.