Capillary gas chromatographic measurement of neutral urinary steroids: evaluation and comparison with alternative methodology.

The major neutral urinary steroids have been quantitated by capillary gas chromatography and the reproducibility and accuracy of the method have been fully evaluated. Typical intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation for individual steroids ranged from 4.9 to 10.1% and from 15.6 to 21.5%, respectively. Comparison of steroid values with alternate and commonly employed procedures for measuring urinary 17-oxosteroids, total 17-oxogenic steroids, and cortisol and plasma dehydroepiandrosterone-sulphate yielded correlation coefficients between 0.71 and 0.79. A definite relationship between serum cortisol and urinary trihydroxy-pregnanedione was also shown. Urinary androstenedione metabolites, however, could not be significantly (P greater than 0.05) correlated with the normalised androgen ratio in plasma.