DETERMINATION OF URINARY 11-OXYGENATED 17-KETOGENIC STEROIDS*

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Abstract
THE increasing clinical investigative interest in adrenocortical function and awareness of therapeutic aspects of adrenal dysfunction have increased the need for specific methods of urinary corticoid assay which are adaptable to use in the hospital laboratory. Certain problems are involved in applying any of the published methods (1–7) to clinical investigations. In attempting to choose the most appropriate method for our institution, three important functions were deemed desirable: 1) the method should be conveniently applicable to a sufficiently large number of specimens; 2) it should detect the greatest possible number of the known adrenocortical steroid metabolites of the C19 and C21 series with only a minimum number of compounds to be analyzed per specimen; and 3) the method should have high chemical specificity. It is the purpose of this communication to describe a new method of analyzing urinary corticoids, which embodies the advantage of measuring in one step a pair of isomeric oxidation products derived from the excreted 11-oxygenated cortical steroids. Following enzymatic hydrolysis of the urinary steroid glucosiduronates, the extracts are treated with chromic acid under mild conditions to form androstane-3,11,17-trione and its isomer etiocholane-3,11,17-trione (referred to as “triones” in the text). These “triones” are isolated by paper chromatography and measured quantitatively by the Zimmermann reaction.