Untargeted profiling of urinary steroid metabolites after testosterone ingestion: opening new perspectives for antidoping testing.

Antidoping procedures are expected to greatly benefit from untargeted metabolomic approaches through the discovery of new biomarkers of prohibited substances abuse. Endogenous steroid metabolites were monitored in urine samples from a controlled elimination study of testosterone undecanoate after ingestion. A platform coupling ultra-high pressure LC with high-resolution quadrupole TOF MS was used and high between-subject metabolic variability was successfully handled using a multiblock data analysis strategy. Links between specific subsets of metabolites and influential genetic polymorphisms of the UGT2B17 enzyme were highlighted. This exploratory metabolomic strategy constitutes a first step toward a better understanding of the underlying patterns driving the high interindividual variability of steroid metabolism. Promising biomarkers were selected for further targeted study.