Feasibility of Dried Blood Spot for Hepatitis C Diagnosis

Agile, accessible and cheap diagnosis of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is essential to achieve the elimination of this infection, worldwide, as mandated by the World Health Organzation as part of its strategy for 2030. Dried blood spots can be an attractive alternative for sample collection among people living in remote areas and vulnerable populations due to the less invasive collection, its biosafety, and storage & transportation of samples at room temperature.

A study, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, evaluated the usefulness of dried blood spot samples for the diagnosis and the assessment of HCV infection rates in three different settings in Brazil. Cross-sectional analysis of a sample collection from different populations assessed the performance of the testing algorithms and respective procedures among different populations with diverse background infection rates.

The full study results can be accessed here.