title: Finding a Needle in a Haystack: the Advantages of Liquid Chromatography--Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in Determination of Sex Hormones in Children.
abstract: Determination of steroid sex hormones concentrations in children is very important for diagnosis of a wide range of pubertal, adrenal and sex development disorders. The majority of hormone measurements are carried out using traditional immunoassays, due to their technical simplicity, cost and availability of commercial reagents. But, due to limited specificity and sensitivity, traditional immunoassays often fail to determine low concentration analytes such as sex hormones in pediatric blood. In the last decade, the LC-MS/MS assay has risen as a new player in the analytic diagnostic field. The assay has proven appropriate for detection of very low hormones concentrations in blood, is quite easy to perform and can detect multiple steroids from a single sample. For the routine determination of an individual or panel of steroids, LC-MS/MS is now the recommended method for most diagnostic laboratories.
authors.forename: Shira
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirsh
authors.forename: Anat
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ben-Dor
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D012734:Disorders of Sex Development / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012739:Gonadal Steroid Hormones / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry
chemical_list: D012739:Gonadal Steroid Hormones