Metabolomics can spot the difference: Dried Blood Spot (DBS) coming of age in a metabolomics era

In the wake of the birth of personalized medical treatment, the need for validated in-home bio-specimen collection options from patients are required. New ways of collecting and storing bio-specimens to retain important biological information are on the rise. For this reason, dried blood spots (DBSs) have gained increasing attention especially in the field of metabolomics. Metabolomics systematically captures the phenotype of disease, interventions, microbiome, etc. if the most relevant biological pathways are represented broadly, as has traditionally been demonstrated in clinical EDTA plasma. Here we demonstrated results from a study comparing DBS against the golden standard in blood collection, EDTA plasma. The study showed that even though DBS had a reduction of overall metabolites coverage compared to plasma (̴ 800 vs ̴1200 metabolites, respectively), all major pathways and more than 95% of the metabolic sub-pathways that are routinely detected in plasma are conserved in DBS. Traditional biological signatures, including exercise biomarkers, dietary biomarkers, and even the cyclical trend of the female hormonal biomarkers, are equally well represented in DBS compared to plasma. This evidently showed that metabolic signatures of disease that have been well characterized in plasma are maintained in DBS. The analysis of DBS for metabolomics has come a long way and this study showed DBS to be a valuable alternative to EDTA plasma and ought be considered when plasma is impractical to collect and store i.e., at-home collections, remote localities, resource limited settings, pediatrics, and IEM screening to name a few. DBS-based metabolomics provides a powerful tool for personalized medicine and an effective way of bringing metabolomics into our homes.