AbsoluteIDQ® Stero17 Kit for Steroid Hormone Analysis

BIOCRATES Life Sciences has now launched the second in its series of steroid hormone kits based on tandem mass spectrometry—AbsoluteIDQ® Stero17. The kit, which can analyze up to 80 samples per batch and requires a sample volume of only 500 mcL, enables the most comprehensive simultaneous quantification of a steroid panel using HPLC-MS/MS as well as improved high throughput UHPLC–MS/MS analysis.

Steroid hormones—central to many of life’s processes.
Steroid hormones play a crucial role in a wide range of physiological processes. Glucocorticoids are not only involved in carbohydrate metabolism, they also affect the lipid and protein metabolism and play an important role in the reaction to stress. Mineralocorticoids act mainly in the regulation of the water and mineral balance in the body. Estrogens and progestagens regulate almost all of the reproductive processes in women. Inborn or acquired disorders of steroid hormone metabolism have been the source of a number of serious diseases and are among the most common endocrine disorders (e.g. Cushing syndrome, adrenal tumors, hyperaldosteronism).

This shows how significant the role of steroid hormones in the body may play and how important the quantitative analysis of steroid hormones in clinical diagnostics and research based applications can be. Particularly the main advantages of LC-MS/MS compared to immunoassays are multiplexing (simultaneous analysis of multiple target analytes), higher specificity (by so-called multiple reaction monitoring (MRM), greater dynamic range of the calibration and lower inter-laboratory variability (including diversity in sample preparation, calibrators and analytical methods).

What is AbsoluteIDQ® Stero17?
The AbsoluteIDQ® Stero17 Kit by Biocrates covers the standardized quantitative analysis of 17 of the most important steroid hormones from only a single blood sample using (U)HPLC-MS/MS, a technology meeting the most stringent quality control criteria for routine diagnostics, ensuring a high level of analytical sensitivity and selectivity, and guaranteeing superior accuracy and excellent precision for robust results. The kit, which has been approved by proficiency tests, comes complete with isotope-labeled internal standards, reagents, and protocols for sample preparation based on solid-phase extraction in a 96-well plate format and subsequent (U)HPLC-ESI-MS/MS analysis in highly specific multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode and a tightly quality-controlled workflow.