Quantitative analysis of specific androgens in serum and urine samples from male, pre, and postmenopausal subjects using LC-MRM-MS

Androgens are endogenous hormones that play a crucial role in the paracrine and intracrine hormone system to perform and maintain vital physiological functions. Altered levels of androgens are implicated in many diseases such as sexual dysregulation, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and heart diseases etc. In this manuscript we describe a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) for quantitatively measuring specific androgens such as dehydroepiandrosterone, testosterone, androsterone sulphate, androstenedione, and dihydrotestosterone in serum and urine samples. Serum acquired from nine different subjects (three pre-menopausal women, three postmenopausal women, and three healthy males) were used to evaluate the developed methods. In the sample preparation methods for serum either protein precipitation or liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) was used while the analysis of urinary androgens used LLE. The extracted androgens were quantitatively measured using LC-MRM-MS to which known amounts of stable isotope labeled standards were added. This manuscript also presents a LC-MRM-MS method mode for the analysis of oxime derivatized androgens potentially to enhance the sensitivity of the assay if required, from urine and venous-drawn serum samples.