In previous studies, various steroids have been associated with stress and have therefore been quantified to investigate stress‐related questions. Since the main stress‐related steroid cortisol follows a circadian rhythm, often hair is analysed to quantify this steroid. Further, hair analysis gives the unique possibility of long‐time monitoring by analysing a certain segment of hair, since hair grows on average 1 cm per month. Hair is a difficult matrix due to the complex sample preparation with many steps including washing and grinding, followed by various extraction steps. Additionally, steroids are endogenous and are therefore present in the hair matrix. Hence, no analyte free matrix is available, which is needed for the quantification via external calibrators. To overcome this problem, the so‐called surrogate methods can be used, for which a 13C3 labelled or deuterated reference compound of the steroid of interest is used for quantification. In the present study, a surrogate method was developed and fully validated for the quantitative analysis of seven steroids in human hair. Validation experiments showed that the method is further suitable for semi‐quantitative analysis of estradiol. However, it is not suitable for the analysis of androsterone and DHEAS. The method was successfully used to analyse steroids in a comprehensive study of 360 adolescent hair samples, enabling research into stress markers.

中文翻译：

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分析和量化头发样本中与慢性压力相关的内源性类固醇

在之前的研究中，各种类固醇与压力有关，因此被量化以调查与压力相关的问题。由于主要的与压力相关的类固醇皮质醇遵循昼夜节律，因此通常通过分析头发来量化这种类固醇。此外，头发分析提供了通过分析特定头发片段进行长期监测的独特可能性，因为头发平均每月生长 1 厘米。头发是一种困难的基质，因为样品制备过程复杂，需要许多步骤，包括清洗和研磨，然后进行各种提取步骤。此外，类固醇是内源性的，因此存在于头发基质中。因此，没有可用的无分析物基质，而这是通过外部校准器进行定量所需的。为了克服这个问题，可以使用所谓的替代方法，其中13C3感兴趣的类固醇的标记或氘代参考化合物用于定量。在本研究中，开发了一种替代方法并经过充分验证，用于定量分析人类头发中的七种类固醇。验证实验表明该方法进一步适用于雌二醇的半定量分析。但它不适用于雄酮和 DHEAS 的分析。该方法已成功用于对 360 个青少年头发样本进行的综合研究中分析类固醇，从而使研究压力标记成为可能。