The concentration of testosterone in serial samples of peripheral venous plasma from infertile women.

The concentration of testosterone has been determined in daily samples of peripheral venous plasma throughout one complete menstrual cycle from each of 4 women with regular, but anovulatory cycles (Group 1) and 13 apparently normal, but infertile women (Group 2). The individual patterns and combined values have been compared with those obtained from 9 healthy volunteers (Group 3), who appeared to satisfy strict criteria for normal ovarian and uterine function. The menstrual cycles from subjects in groups 2 and 3 were subdivided retrospectively into follicular, periovulatory and luteal phases according to the day of the LH peak. The results show that the values for every subject in Group 1 tended to remain relatively costant and the overall concentration (32.3 +/- 10.4; ng/100ml; mean +/- SD) was significantly lower (P less than 0,05, student's "t" test) than the corresponding figure for Group 3 (41.6 +/- 11.8). The patterns of testosterone in Groups 2 and 3 were variable, but the overall concentrations in Group 2 during the periovulatory phase (53.7 +/- 12.7) was significantly higher (P less than 0.025) than the corresponding value (41.9 +/- 11.9) for Group 3. The findings are discussed.