Gao Wei, Kirschbaum Clemens, Grass Juliane, Stalder Tobias
TU Dresden, Department of Psychology, Dresden, Germany.
TU Dresden, Department of Psychology, Dresden, Germany.
J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2016 Sep;162:92-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jsbmb.2015.12.022. Epub 2015 Dec 21.
The quantification of endogenous steroid hormone concentrations in hair is increasingly used as a method for obtaining retrospective information on long-term integrated hormone exposure. Several different analytical procedures have been employed for hair steroid analysis, with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) being recognized as a particularly powerful analytical tool. Several methodological aspects affect the performance of LC-MS systems for hair steroid analysis, including sample preparation and pretreatment, steroid extraction, post-incubation purification, LC methodology, ionization techniques and MS specifications. Here, we critically review the differential value of such protocol variants for hair steroid hormones analysis, focusing on both analytical quality and practical feasibility issues. Our results show that, when methodological challenges are adequately addressed, LC-MS protocols can not only yield excellent sensitivity and specificity but are also characterized by relatively simple sample processing and short run times. This makes LC-MS based hair steroid protocols particularly suitable as a high-quality option for routine application in research contexts requiring the processing of larger numbers of samples.
头发中内源性甾体激素浓度的定量分析越来越多地被用作一种获取长期综合激素暴露回顾性信息的方法。几种不同的分析程序已被用于头发甾体分析，液相色谱-质谱联用（LC-MS）被认为是一种特别强大的分析工具。几个方法学方面会影响用于头发甾体分析的LC-MS系统的性能，包括样品制备和预处理、甾体提取、孵育后纯化、LC方法、电离技术和MS规格。在此，我们批判性地回顾了此类方案变体在头发甾体激素分析中的差异价值，重点关注分析质量和实际可行性问题。我们的结果表明，当方法学挑战得到充分解决时，LC-MS方案不仅可以产生出色的灵敏度和特异性，而且还具有相对简单的样品处理和较短的运行时间的特点。这使得基于LC-MS的头发甾体方案特别适合作为一种高质量选项，用于需要处理大量样品的研究环境中的常规应用。
