I would like to conduct a glucose tolerance test. Except I would also like to assess insulin. Rather than take multiple blood samples from venepuncture I would like to do finger tip sampling.
Can I assess insulin with finger tip sampling and how?
I have read reliability between finger tip and venous sampling is not high for insulin. Green et al (2014).
"Can I assess insulin with finger tip sampling (1) and how (2)?"
(1) Yes
(2) By any sensitive method of your choosing, such as an ultrasensitive ELISA.
However, insulin measured in peripheral blood from a needle prick is very unlikely to reliably represent the circulating insulin levels in blood.
It seems that your plan will sacrifice accuracy and add discomfort to your subjects.
You can, Yes, not as reliable as venous samples, but multiple venous samples or cannulation is not always feasible ( e.g in research involving children).
Collect capillary samples in a lithium heparin coated microvette ( e.g CB 300 tubes, Sarstedt Ltd, Leicester, UK) and centrifuge to separate plasma. you can then use any available ELISA enzyme immunoassay kit ( I've found DRG to work well). a 300 µL capillary sample is enough to run samples in duplicate. See Cockcroft et al, 2015. JSAMS 18(6):720-4
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