Analysis of Corticosteroids

The adrenal cortex is the source of a number of steroid hormones that play a fundamental role in regulating body metabolism. The elucidation of the complicated biosynthetic pathways and the metabolic fate of these hormones proceeded relatively slowly until it became possible to make reliable measurements of the concentrations of these important steroids in body tissues. Because of the complex structure of the steroids, their close chemical similarity to each other and their occurrence in low concentrations in body tissues, the development of suitable analytical techniques proved a major challenge to chemists and biochemists working in this field. Although many of these problems still exist, there has been significant progress in the clinical field, particularly because of the availability of radiolabelled and stable isotope-labelled steroids and the introduction of immunoassay (IA) methods for routine clinical biochemical analysis. The advent of highly selective separatory chromatographic methods (LC and GC) increasingly linked to mass spectrometers means that analytical methods are now available for all of the important adrenal cortical hormones, their major precursors and metabolites, and synthetic glucocorticoids. These methods have found wide application, especially in clinical research and investigation, where they have been used to elucidate the nature of many endocrine disease processes, and for diagnosis and treatment. These facts in themselves highlight the importance to the analyst of ensuring that the techniques used are as reliable as possible.