• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.25-31
• /
• 2011

Blood glucose information is important for self regulation in daily life, but the frequency of self test remains to be only 17%(9 tests/month) in Korea, mainly due to pain during blood sampling. The present study tried to validate the clinical efficacy of the forearm as an alternative sampling site with minimized pain. Capillary blood was sampled both on the index finger($G_F$) and the forearm($G_A$), immediately followed by glucose measurements in 531 subjects, 25 who visited the Health Enhancement Center of C University Hospital, then venous blood($G_V$) was sampled for glucose test. The blood glucose concentration measured on the forearm was closer to the venous glucose than on the finger. The mean difference between $G_V$and $G_F$ was only 10 mg/dL well within the internationally accepted error limit. Error grid analyses of $G_F-G_V$, $G_A-G_V$ and $G_A-G_F$ revealed that the number of data points in regions A and B took 100%, 99.8%, and 97.9%, respectively. These results demonstrate the forearm blood glucose test is not only accurate but also clinically valid. Therefore, the forearm blood glucose test can be a useful way of self managing the chronic diabetes with minimized sampling pain.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.10 no.9
• /
• pp.2451-2459
• /
• 2009

The present study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of the blood glucose test with almost painless vacuum assisted auto-lancing technique. The blood glucose concentration measurements in the capillary blood sampled from the alternative (forearm) site were compared with the standard venous or finger sampling techniques. Capillary blood was sampled from both the left index finger and the forearm, followed by the venous blood sampling in 531 patients who visited the C University Hospital. Blood sugar test was performed for each blood samples for comparative analysis. Mean blood glucose concentration measured on the forearm was closer to the venous glucose level than that of the finger, but the difference was approximately 10 mg/dL small enough to ignore from the clinical point of view. The correlation coefficients of the measured blood glucose levels between finger and vein and between forearm and vein were 0.94 and 0.92, respectively (p<0.001). The blood glucose measurement on the forearm also well correlated with the finger, showing a correlation coefficient of 0.94, and both data were very much close to each other. Therefore, the blood sugar test on the alternative capillary blood sampling site such as forearm was accurate enough for clinical practice. The vacuum assisted auto-lancing technique on the alternative site would be of particular interest for the disease management of the chronic diabetes, since it induces almost no pain when sampling blood from the capillaries.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.153-159
• /
• 2004

To ascertain the effects of hair dyeing application on oxidative stress in human, a mixture of permanent black colored hair dye with the same amount of oxidant containing 6% hydrogen peroxide was used. A hair dyeing with contacting the scalp (conventional dyeing) and a hair dyeing with 3 to 4mm away from the scalp (alternative dyeing) were applied to each 15 young healthy women. Blood was taken from the brachial vein at two sampling times, just before and 6 hours alter the hair dyeing, and antioxidant enzyme activities and antioxidant contents were measured in red blood cells. After dyeing, malondialdehyde(MDA) contents for conventional dyeing group was shown to a tendence of more increased than alternative dyeing group. After dyeing, reduced glutathione (GSH) contents for conventional dyeing group was shown to a tendence of more decreased than alternative dyeing group. After dyeing, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities were significantly decreased in conventional dyeing group (p < 0.01), however, SOD and CAT activities were not significantly decreased in alternative dyeing group. After dyeing, there was no significant decrease in glutathione peroxidase (GPX) activity both for conventional dyeing group and alternative dyeing group. Therefore, after dyeing, the degree of oxidative stress in red blood cells for alternative dyeing group was appeared to be lower than conventional dyeing group.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
• /
• v.15 no.11
• /
• pp.4659-4662
• /
• 2014

The tumor marker CA 15-3 is one of the most import reliable for metastatic breast cancer monitoring. While it is generally assessed in serum of patients, blood sampling is an invasive method compared to saliva sampling which is simple and could be an alternative to blood according to many studies. The aim of this investigation was to assess the relationship between serum and salivary concentrations of the protein CA 15-3 in patients with breast cancer and healthy asymptomatic volunteers. A case-control study was conducted with 60 women: 29 breast cancer patients from the Maternity Hospital Souissi Rabat (Morocco) and 31 healthy asymptomatic women. The CA 15-3 concentrations in saliva and serum samples were assessed using an enzyme immune assay (EIA kits) and comparison between cases and controls was made by the Mann-Whitney test. The correlation between serum and saliva CA 15-3 concentration was tested using Pearson correlation. The comparison result of CA15-3 concentration in saliva and serum level in cases and controls was not statistically significant (p>0.05). However, the correlation between salivary and serum CA 15-3 concentration was positive and statistically significant (r=0.27, p=0.03). In conclusion, the positive correlation between salivary and serum expression found in our study suggests that saliva could be an alternative to blood sampling to help breast cancer monitoring.

• Korean Journal of Organic Agriculture
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.469-477
• /
• 2023

Animal welfare has been gradually gathering more attention from consumers over time, making it increasingly important to assess the level of stress experienced by livestock. Traditionally, stress has been measured by collecting blood to assess cortisol levels, an action that can be considered distressing for the animal. Therefore, we aimed to explore the feasibility of using hair as an alternative medium to blood for stress assessment. We utilized B/F (blood collected at the farm), B/A (blood collected after transport to the auction), and H/A (hair collected at the auction after blood sampling) from calves at the age of 7-9 months transported from the farm to the auction. Hair underwent a washing and extraction process to utilize hair extracts, while blood was centrifuged to analyze using ELISA. The cortisol concentration in the blood was significantly higher in B/A compared to B/F (p<0.05), confirming that the calves experienced stress during transportation. Additionally, H/A was significantly lower than both B/A and B/F (p<0.0001). These results emphasized that cortisol in hair is not suitable for investigating short-term stress in livestock, as it is with blood. While measuring stress indices using hair may not be appropriate for replacing blood, it is considered a highly suitable practice for animal welfare, and further research in this area should be continued.

• Childhood Kidney Diseases
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.16-26
• /
• 2024

Patients with kidney disease require frequent blood tests to monitor their kidney function, which is particularly difficult for young children and the elderly. For these people, the standard method is to evaluate serum creatinine or cystatin C or drug levels through venous sampling, but more recently, evaluation using dried blood spots has been used. This narrative review reports information from the literature on the use of dried blood spots to quantify the main markers used to detect kidney diseases. The ScienceDirect and PubMed databases were searched using the keywords: "dried blood on filter paper," "markers of renal function," "renal function," "creatinine," "cystatin C," "urea," "iohexol," and "iotalamate." Studies using animal samples were excluded, and only relevant articles in English or Spanish were considered. Creatinine was the most assessed biomarker in studies using dried blood spots to monitor kidney function, showing good performance in samples whose hematocrit levels were within normal reference values. According to the included studies, dried blood spots are a practical monitoring alternative for kidney disease. Validation parameters, such as sample and card type, volume, storage, internal patterns, and the effects of hematocrit are crucial to improving the reliability of these results.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.101-107
• /
• 2004

To ascertain the effects of hair dyeing application on the DNA damage in human lymphocytes, a mixture of permanent black colored hair dye with the same amount of oxidant containing 6% hydrogen peroxide was used. A hair dyeing with contacting the scalp (conventional dyeing) and a hair dyeing with 3 to 4mm away from the scalp (alternative dyeing) were applied to each If young healthy women. Blood was taken from the brachial vein at two sampling times, just before and 6 hours after the hair dyeing, and tail extent moment(TEM) and tail length (TL) were measured by using a comet assay. After dyeing, TL was significantly increased in both conventional dyeing group and alternative dyeing group compared with before dyeing as an average of 47% and 28%, respectively, and TL for conventional dyeing group was higher than alternative dyeing group as an average of 1.2 fold. After dyeing, TEM was significantly increased in both conventional dyeing group and alternative dyeing group compared with before dyeing as an average of 192% and 76%, respectively, and TEM for conventional dyeing group was significantly higher than alternative dyeing group as an average of 1.7 fold. Therefore, alternative dyeing application was induced to lower lymphocyte DNA damage than conventional dyeing application, and TEM was appeared to be a more sensitive tool for the measurement of lymphocyte DNA damage than TL in this study.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.1751-1758
• /
• 2012

Capillary blood sampling on the forearm reduces pain caused by skin puncture. The present study compared the blood glucose test results performed at different sampling sites of the forearm, finger, and vein to evaluate clinical validity of this alternative site blood sampling technique. Subjects numbered 555 including 61 diabetic patients participated to measure the glucose concentration on the finger ($G_F$) and the forearm ($G_A$) with a portable glucometer under overnight fasting state. Then, the venous glucose concentration ($G_V$) was measured in 514 subjects in less than 1 hour. The test results were analyzed by simple linear regression, intraclass correlation, and Passing-Bablok regression techniques. $G_A$ was highly correlated with $G_F$ or $G_V$ showing the correlation coefficients (r) of approximately 0.97 (P<0.0001) in the normal group. The patient group also resulted similarly high correlation with only slightly lower r value. The mean differences in glucose concentration were less than ${\pm}10mg/dL$ regardless of the sampling sites. Intraclass correlation coefficients were slightly smaller than r but very much similar in value in both groups. The 95% confidence intervals of the slope as well as the intercept in the Passing-Bablok regression analysis were < ${\pm}20%$ and < ${\pm}20mg/dL$, respectively, which were within the clinically acceptable ranges. These three statistical techniques introduced in the present study well demonstrated the consistency of $G_A$ with $G_F$ and $G_V$. Therefore, the forearm blood glucose test could be considered as clinically valid under fasting condition.

• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.101-107
• /
• 2010

Purpose : In evaluation of patients, laboratory results are crucial in determination of a treatment plan. Obtaining venous blood from infants and children is a difficult procedure. Substitution of a capillary blood sample for a venous blood sample has been suggested. However, there are few studies showing mutual correlation between C-reactive protein (CRP) results in capillary and venous blood. This study was designed to determine whether the result of the capillary sample is the same as the result of the venous blood sample. Methods : After informed consent, a pair of venous and fingertip capillary blood samples were simultaneously collected from 100 children. The LC-178CRPTM was used for analysis of capillary blood and the Hitachi 7180 automatic hematology analyzer was used for analysis of venous blood. We compared CRP of both venous and capillary blood samples. Results were analyzed by crosstabulation analysis, simple regression analysis and the Bland Altman Plot method. Results : A close correlation (90.63%) was observed between capillary and venous blood analyzed by crosstabulation analysis. CRP results were similar between the two groups and showed a high coefficient correlation ($\beta$=1.3434, $R^2$=0.9888, P<0.0001) when analyzed by a simple regression model. The average value in venous blood was also higher compared to capillary blood. According to Bland Altman Plot analysis, lab results were measured at a 95% confidence interval. Conclusion : CRP results from capillary blood showed close correlation with venous blood sampling. At present, venous blood sampling is the preferred method. However, due to difficulty in venous blood sampling, capillary sampling could be considered as an alternative technique for use with children.

• Development and Reproduction
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.139-148
• /
• 2019

Rising of water temperature due to global warming is a great concern to aquaculturists and fishery biologists. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of high water temperature on juvenile red spotted grouper, Epinephelus akaara based on the evaluation of stress responses in blood. E. akaara juveniles were exposed to different thermal conditions ($25^{\circ}C$, $28^{\circ}C$, $31^{\circ}C$, and $34^{\circ}C$) for 6 weeks following 2 weeks of acclimation at $25^{\circ}C$. Blood cell morphology and number were examined at three sampling points (2, 7, and 42 days) from a total of 180 fish. Major erythrocytic cellular abnormalities (ECA) observed in blood smears of thermally stressed groups ($31^{\circ}C$ and $34^{\circ}C$) after 6 weeks were echinocytes, teardrop-like cells, swollen cells and vacuolated cells. Both red and white blood cell number (RBC and WBC) were significantly (p<0.05) elevated in $31^{\circ}C$ and $34^{\circ}C$ group after 6 weeks thermal exposure. Differential leucocytes number showed significant increases in neutrophil (N) and decreases in lymphocytes (L) in the highest temperature ($34^{\circ}C$). Different N:L ratio was observed at different thermal conditions which can be used as a reliable alternative to measure stress response. Taken together, these results suggest that higher temperature ($31^{\circ}C$ and $34^{\circ}C$) can interfere the immune system of red spotted grouper by altering the blood cell morphology and number.