Application of dried blood spots to determine vitamin D status in a large nutritional study with unsupervised sampling: the Food4Me project

Ulrich Hoeller*, Manuela Baur, Franz F. Roos, Lorraine Brennan, Hannelore Daniel, Rosalind Fallaize, Hannah Forster, Eileen R. Gibney, Mike Gibney, Magdalena Godlewska, Kai Hartwig, Silvia Kolossa, Christina P. Lambrinou, Katherine M. Livingstone, Julie A. Lovegrove, Anna L. Macready, Yannis Manios, Cyril F. M. Marsaux, J. Alfredo Martinez, Carlos Celis-MoralesGeorge Moschonis, Santiago Navas-Carretero, Clare B. O'Donovan, Rodrigo San-Cristobal, Wim H. M. Saris, Agnieszka Surwillo, Iwona Traczyk, Lydia Tsirigoti, Marianne C. Walsh, Clara Woolhead, John C. Mathers, Peter Weber

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

An efficient and robust method to measure vitamin D (25-hydroxy vitamin D3 (25(OH)D3) and 25-hydroxy vitamin D2 in dried blood spots (DBS) has been developed and applied in the pan-European multi-centre, internet-based, personalised nutrition intervention study Food4Me. The method includes calibration with blood containing endogenous 25(OH)D3, spotted as DBS and corrected for haematocrit content. The methodology was validated following international standards. The performance characteristics did not reach those of the current gold standard liquid chromatography-MS/MS in plasma for all parameters, but were found to be very suitable for status-level determination under field conditions. DBS sample quality was very high, and 3778 measurements of 25(OH)D3 were obtained from 1465 participants. The study centre and the season within the study centre were very good predictors of 25(OH)D3 levels (P<0.001 for each case). Seasonal effects were modelled by fitting a sine function with a minimum 25(OH)D3 level on 20 January and a maximum on 21 July. The seasonal amplitude varied from centre to centre. The largest difference between winter and summer levels was found in Germany and the smallest in Poland. The model was cross-validated to determine the consistency of the predictions and the performance of the DBS method. The Pearson's correlation between the measured values and the predicted values was r 0.65, and the sd of their differences was 21.2 nmol/l. This includes the analytical variation and the biological variation within subjects. Overall, DBS obtained by unsupervised sampling of the participants at home was a viable methodology for obtaining vitamin D status information in a large nutritional study.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)202-211
Number of pages10
JournalBritish Journal of Nutrition
Volume115
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 28 Jan 2016

Keywords

  • Vitamin D status
  • Dried blood spot sampling
  • Nutrition intervention study Food4Me
  • Analytical methods
  • ASSAY
  • TURNOVER
  • SERUM
  • RETINOL
  • HEMATOCRIT

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