Determination of testosterone in plasma from men by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, with high-resolution selected-ion monitoring and metastable peak monitoring.

Highly specific methods are described for determining testosterone in plasma or serum from men. Extract fractions obtained by selective isolation procedures are converted to tert-butyldimethylsilyl (TBDMS) oximes/TBDMS ethers or methyl oximes/TBDMS ethers and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry in the high-resolution selected-ion monitoring or metastable peak-monitoring modes. [2H3]Testosterone and unlabeled 17-epitestosterone are used as the respective internal standards. When we applied the two procedures to analysis of samples of pooled plasma and serum used for external quality assessment of routine assays, the results agreed well. Interlaboratory values for mean concentrations obtained by routine immunoassays (y) consistently exceeded values obtained by our technique (x), although the values closely correlated (r = 0.997; y = 1.008x + 0.564 nmol/L).