Analysis of metabolic profiles of steroids in faeces of healthy subjects undergoing chenodeoxycholic acid treatment by liquid-gel chromatography and gas-liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

The multicomponent analysis of faecal steroids is described. Steroids were removed from faeces by solvent stripping in a Soxhlet apparatus and the resulting extracts were fractionated by diethylaminohydroxypropyl Sephadex column chromatography into neutral sterols, free bile acids, glycine conjugated bile acids, taurine conjugated bile acids and sulphated steroids. In this study the method has been applied for faecal steroid analyses of healthy subjects undergoing chenodeoxycholic acid therapy. Chenodeoxycholic acid administration causes a considerable increase in the concentration of faecal lithocholic acid which is a known comutagenic bile acid. Furthermore it has been shown that conjugated bile acids can account for between 10 and 20% of the faecal bile acid pool. The method described is convenient and may be useful for epidemiological studies which require a large number of faecal samples to be analysed.