Dried Blood Spot Biomarkers for Dementia: A Scoping Review of Analytical Performance, Clinical Applications, and Future Directions

Presenter

Basma M. Saleh

Background

• Dementia is a global health burden with increasing prevalence.

• Standard biomarker testing (e.g., CSF, PET) is invasive, expensive, and requires specialized facilities.

• Venous blood draws have limitations in cold-chain storage and transport.

• Dried Blood Spots (DBS) and Dried Plasma Spots (DPS) offer minimally invasive alternatives with ambient stability, enabling remote collection and reducing costs.

Objectives

• Evaluate dried blood and dried plasma spot technologies as decentralized, minimally invasive alternatives for Alzheimer’s disease biomarker detection.

Methods

• Scoping review following PRISMA guidelines, time 2020–2025.

Central Message / Workflow

From Centralized Laboratories

Current pathway

• Venous blood draw or lumbar puncture.

• Requires cold-chain transport.

• Centralized laboratory.

• High cost and complex logistics.

• Limited access and scalability.

To Home-Based Diagnosis

DBS/DPS pathway

• Finger prick blood collection.

• Apply drops on DBS card.

• Mail sample from home.

• Stable at ambient temperature for weeks.

• Portable and scalable testing.

• Global accessibility and equitable reach.

Results

• Out of 708 total studies, eight studies included and reported reliable detection of:

  • Amyloid-β

  • Tau

  • Apoe4

  • Transcriptomic signatures

Major Innovation

• A Single Molecule Array (Simoa) technology applied to dried plasma spots achieved detection thresholds as low as 0.13 pg/mL for pTau-181, a critical advancement for early diagnosis.

DBS/DPS Workflow at a Glance

1. Finger prick

2. DBS card preparation

3. Mail sample

4. Biomarker detection

5. Results for clinical research

Take-home Message

With continued optimization and standardization, DBS/DPS technologies could revolutionize biomarker pipelines, transforming dementia research into a truly global, accessible enterprise.

Authors

• Basma M. Saleh

• Farida Abougazia

• Omnia Abdelraheem

• Mohamed Salama

Affiliation

The American University in Cairo
School of Sciences and Engineering
Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology