WHAT IS DRIED BLOOD SPOT SAMPLING ?

Dried Blood Spot (DBS) sampling is an easy and inexpensive way of collecting, shipping and storing blood samples. It represents an alternative to the body fluid based method (plasma, liquid blood or serum). Originally developed for the purpose of neonatal screening, it has been around for almost 50 years. As a microsampling technique it has gained increasing importance since this method offers strong advantages compared to the conventional collection and analysis of blood or plasma samples.

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These advantages include the need for remarkably lower blood volumes and easier shipping and storage, often at ambient temperatures. This leads to a simplification of the blood collection process and a reduction of the costs involved.
For DBS analysis, blood samples are spotted onto commercially available DBS cards, dried and shipped to the laboratory for mass spectrometry (MS) analysis. But prior to MS analysis, the blood sample needs to be extracted from the DBS card. Until now, this represented a major drawback of the technique as DBS sample extraction required several manually performed process steps, and therefore was time consuming and costly. The fully automated CAMAG DBS-MS 500 extraction system makes DBS analysis remarkably easier and offers the efficient alternative compared to conventional extraction techniques.
Furthermore, in preclinical studies the number of test animals can be reduced (due to the need for lower blood volumes) which is in accordance with the 3R requirement of animal studies (replacement, reduction, refinement).

SOURCE:http://www.camag.com/en/dbs/what_is_dried_blood_spot_sampling.cfm