Background: During the last few years there has been a growing interest in research focused on the metabolism of steroid hormones despite that the study of metabolic hormone pathways is still a difficult and demanding task because of low steroid concentrations and a complexity of the analysed matrices. Thus, there has been an increasing interest in the development of new, more selective and sensitive methods for monitoring these compounds in biological samples.
Methods: A lot of bibliographic databases for world research literature were structurally searched using selected review question and inclusion/exclusion criteria. Next, the reports of the highest quality were selected using standard tools (181) and they were described to evaluate the advantages and limitations of different approaches in the measurements of the steroids and their metabolites.
Results: The overview of the analytical challenges, development of methods used in the assessment of the metabolic pathways of steroid hormones, and the priorities for future research with a special consideration for liquid chromatography (LC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) techniques have been presented. Moreover, many LC and CE applications in pharmacological and psychological studies as well as endocrinology and sports medicine, taking into account the recent progress in the area of the metabolic profiling of steroids, have been critically discussed.
Conclusion: The latest reports show that LC systems coupled with mass spectrometry have the predominant position in the research of steroid profiles. Moreover, CE techniques are going to gain a prominent position in the diagnosis of hormone levels in the near future.