Determination of testosterone and its metabolites using liquid chromatography with elevated column temperature and flow-rate gradient Original Research Article

A rapid high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for determination of testosterone and its metabolites in biological samples is described. The method combines a flow-rate gradient with elevated column temperature to obtain a complete separation of testosterone and its metabolites. The flow-rate gradient method dramatically reduces the analysis time (17 min) compared with isocratic elution (35 min). This method is simple and reproducible with relative standard deviations (R.S.D.) of <0.1% for retention time and 1–4% for peak area. It provides limits of detection (LOD) in the range of 0.05–0.1 μM for testosterone and its five major metabolites. We applied the method to analyze rat liver microsome samples incubated with testosterone, demonstrating a testosterone metabolic profile due to enzymatic activities in the microsome. Analysis of testosterone and its metabolites is important because metabolism of testosterone is a surrogate measure for cytochrome P-450 (CYP) enzymatic activity.