Fast Efficient Method Detects Illegal Steroids in Urine

The new method takes only a few seconds and involves no time-consuming sample preparation.

Use of banned substances by professional athletes to build muscle and gain a competitive advantage is a growing problem in sports such as track and field, baseball, football, and cycling. Although effective methods exist for detecting the presence of illegal steroids in urine, current methods are take time and involve cumbersome preparation steps.

The currently used analytic methods for anabolic steroids and/or their metabolites are gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). But urine samples are highly complex and preparation procedures include multiple steps of sample extraction, hydrolysis, and derivatization. The final step of analysis by mass spectrometry takes little time but the sample preparation steps are usually both time-consuming and labor intensive.

Developed by Prof. Zheng Ouyang and Prof. R. Graham Cooks of the department of chemistry, Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN, USA) and colleagues, the new steroid-testing method combines two state-of-the-art testing techniques called desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) and tandem mass spectrometry. In laboratory studies, the scientists used it to analyze fresh urine samples for the presence of tiny amounts of seven different anabolic steroids. The method accurately identified the steroids in only a few seconds using only a single drop of urine.

The study appeared in the October 2007 online edition of the journal Analytical Chemistry.


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