Standardized LC-MS/MS based steroid hormone profile-analysis.

In order to overcome many limitations of immunoassays, high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) has the potential to find its place in the clinical laboratory medicine for quantification of steroid hormones. A prerequisite for the application of a new analytical procedure in clinical diagnostics is standardization to minimize analytical intra- and interlaboratory variability and inaccuracy. We evaluate a newly standardized HPLC-MS/MS assay in kit-format, developed for routine determination of 16 steroid hormones in human serum samples.