Diagnostic Relevance of Salivary Testosterone Concentrations in Doping Control.

Summary

It is generally accepted that chemical testing of biologic fluids is the most objective means of diagnosis of drug use. In recent years saliva has attracted much attention. The prime advantage of saliva is that it offers non-invasive, stress-free and real-time repeated sampling whereas blood collection is undesirable, difficult and expensive. In addition, it is known that androgens such as testosterone can be assayed in saliva, as these steroids pass the endothelial-epithelial barriers by passive diffusion. Nevertheless, the correlations of blood, urine and saliva concentrations are not well documented. In recent reviews, it is pointed out that salivary hormone analysis could be a promising method for sports medicine and doping control, but much work is needed before the use of saliva samples in this area receives the acceptance. According to recent studies the increase of testosterone concentration in saliva is significantly higher than alterations of steroid concentrations (or ratios) in blood or urine. Saliva concentration may therefore serve as screening parameter to select suspicious cases for further target evaluation (e.g. by IRMS). This may be beneficial to identify cases of transdermal administration of low steroid doses. It is therefore the aim of the present project to detect administered testosterone in saliva and compare these levels to those in blood and urine. The intention is not to detect high dosage but low dosage abuse of testosterone, as a single-dose by patch application. From the practical point of view saliva could offer a complementary specimen for a pre-screening of testosterone. So it could be assumed that salivary testosterone exceed upon plasma and/or urine levels. So the present study could be the base for a new method to preselect the suspicious samples for testosterone abuse.

Conditions

• Circadian
• Exercise
• Testosterone

Interventions

DRUG

Testosterone supplementation

Low-dose testosterone supplementation will be facilitated by using hormone patches. For pharmacokinetic aspects circadian profiles of saliva/blood/urine will be measured under native conditions and under exogene hormone application. In addition, cross-reactivity of a standardized exercise bout and hormone application will be of further interest.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Technical University of Munich

  collaborator OTHER

• Paracelsus Medical University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Martin Schönfelder, Dr. · Paracelsus Medical Private University Salzburg, AUT

• Hande Hofmann, Dr. · Technische Universität München, GER

• Detlef Thieme, Dr. · Institute of Doping Analysis und Sports Biochemistry Dresden in Kreischa, GER

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

MALE

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-04-30

Primary Completion

2015-12-31

Completion

2015-12-31

Countries

• Germany

Study Locations