Validation and applications of gas chromatography-combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometric method to control misuse of androgens in human

Abstract

The misuse of anabolic androgenic steroids is of particular concern in sports and society. Thus, it is of great importance to discriminate endogenous steroids such as testosterone or testosterone prohormones from their chemically identical synthetic copies. In this study, gas chromatography-combustion/isotope ratio mass spectrometric (GC−C/IRMS) method has been developed and validated for discriminating the origin of anabolic androgenic steroids. The method involves the solid-phase extraction, enzymatic hydrolysis with β-glucuronidase, HPLC-fractionation for the cleanup and analysis by GC−C/IRMS. The difference (Δ13C) of urinary δ13C values between synthetic analogues and endogenous reference compounds (ERC) by GC−C/IRMS was used to elucidate the origin of steroids, and intra- and inter-day precision, specificity and isotope fractionation were evaluated. The present GC−C/IRMS method combined with HPLC cleanup was accurate and reproducible enough to be successfully applied to the test of urine sample from suspected anabolic steroid abusers.