摘要：Selenium (Se) takes a prime position for human health among the essential trace elements (Rayman, 2012). Se is not only essential for male fertility (Michaelis et al., 2014), but also for growth, differentiation and thyroid hormone metabolism (Dumitrescu et al., 2005). A severe Se deficit has been associated with subfertility, increased risk of chronic diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, mostly related with oxidative stress. However, it is difficult to determine the Se status of a given individual due to the need for specialized methods and expensive instrumentations. In the clinics, congenital diseases are detected from small amounts of full blood taken shortly after birth, subsequently dried and stored on a filter paper as dried blot spots (DBS) (Vacchina et al., 2014). This technique has been meanwhile successfully adopted to different medical disciplines, from epidemiology via therapy monitoring to toxicology (Stove et al., 2012) Figure 1.
