Urine Steroid Profile As a New Promising Tool for the Evaluation of Adrenal Tumors. Literature Review

Abstract/Summary:

The purpose of the study was to review the literature assessing the diagnostic performance of urinary steroid profiling (USP) by high-performance liquid chromatography (LC–MS) or gas chromatography (GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) in the evaluation of adrenal lesions, both in terms of functionality and malignancy. The evaluation of adrenal incidentalomas (AI) aims to rule out malignancy and hormone excess. Current diagnostic protocols have several limitations and include time consuming and relatively complicated multi-step processes in most cases. On the contrary, USP by LC–MS/MS or LC-GC/MS offer an easy, comprehensive and non-invasive assessment of adrenal steroid secretion. USP complements current workups used in the evaluation of AIs by improving our ability to identify malignancy and/or autonomous hormone secretion.

Authors: Marta Araujo-Castro, Pablo Valderrábano, Héctor F. Escobar-Morreale, Felicia A. Hanzu & Gregori Casals
Keywords: adrenal incidentalomas, urine steroid profile, mass spectrometry, autonomous cortisol secretion, tetra-hydrocortisol, tetrahydro-11-deoxycortisol
DOI Number: 10.1007/s12020-020-02544-6      Publication Year: 2020

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