Population based evaluation of a multi-parametric steroid profiling on administered endogenous steroids in single low dose.

Steroid profiling provides valuable information to detect doping with endogenous steroids. Apart from the traditionally monitored steroids, minor metabolites can play an important role to increase the specificity and efficiency of current detection methods. The applicability of several minor steroid metabolites was tested on administration studies with low doses of oral testosterone (T), T gel, dihydrotestosterone (DHT) gel and oral dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). The collected data for all monitored parameters were evaluated with the respective population based reference ranges. Besides the traditional markers T/E, T and DHT, minor metabolites 4-OH-Adion and 6α-OH-Adion were found as most sensitive metabolites to detect oral T administration. The most sensitive metabolites for the detection of DHEA were identified as 16α-OH-DHEA and 7β-OH-DHEA but longest detection up to three days (after oral administration of 50 mg) was obtained with non-specific 5β-steroids and its ratios. Steroids applied as a gel had longer effects on the metabolism but were generally not detectable with universal decision criteria. It can be concluded that population based reference ranges show limited overall performance in detecting misuse of small doses of natural androgens. Although some minor metabolites provide additional information for the oral testosterone and DHEA formulations, the topical administered steroids could not be detected for all volunteers using universal reference limits. Application of other population based threshold limits did not lead to longer detection times.