2024 · Clinica chimica acta; international journal of clinical chemistry · paywalled
LC-MS/MS measurement of endogenous steroid hormones and phase II metabolites in blood volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS) for doping control purposes
Ponzetto et al.
The finding, in our words
The authors validated an LC-MS/MS method for quantifying 18 endogenous steroids and metabolites in 30 μL dried blood VAMS samples from 20 healthy volunteers. Steroids remained stable for up to 100 days across storage temperatures from room temperature to -80 °C and through three freeze-thaw cycles, suggesting VAMS is reliable for doping control and clinical hormone monitoring outside traditional settings.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
The analysis indicates that dried blood spots and volumetric absorptive microsampling enable minimally invasive monitoring of prohibited substances, with volumetric absorptive microsampling offering improved quantitative reliability over traditional dried spots.
This study compared four dried blood spot devices for glucocorticoid detection, finding that the Mitra VAMS device offered the best combination of analytical recovery and user usability, whilst the HemaXis DB10 showed the least bias compared to whole blood.
The study compared five microsampling devices, including Mitra tips and Tasso-M20, for detecting 27 steroid esters in dried blood by LC-MS/MS, and found that methanol extraction with Girard's reagent P or T provided the best screening sensitivity with detection limits of 0.05 to 1.0 ng/mL, while methoxyamine derivatization was recommended for confirming boldenone and certain testosterone esters. The Tasso-M20 device produced chromatographic interference with methanol extraction that was only partially resolved by using mixed solvents, at the cost of lower recoveries.
A GC-MS/MS method for anabolic steroids in VAMS dried blood from finger pricking demonstrated good precision, accuracy and stability, with results agreeing with serum specimens. In a testosterone gel administration trial, dried blood total testosterone identified transdermal micro-dosing, with concentrations rising up to ten times baseline at nine hours post-application, supporting decentralised doping screening.
A validated two-step LC-MS/MS protocol can identify 91 prohibited doping agents from a single dried blood spot collected on either cellulose cards or volumetric absorptive microsampling devices. This demonstrates robust multi-analyte screening from capillary blood, supporting decentralised anti-doping programmes where venous sampling is impractical.