Dried Urine Swabs as a Tool for Monitoring Metabolite Excretion

What is it about?

We tested a large set (n=181) of dried urine samples spotted on regular cosmetic cotton swabs for analysis of various urine metabolites. We wanted to test whether urine collected and dried on swabs could be used as an alternative to conventional 24h urine, which is costly and much more demanding for test persons. We found that dried urine swabs can provide qualitatively the same results as 24h urine samples but in case of accurate determinations of metabolite concentrations the results were mostly underestimated. We conclude that the dried urine swab technique is very promising but in order to achieve full agreement with 24h sampling the technique needs further refinement.

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