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THERE has been as yet no simple method for measuring urinary steroids which offers much help in the differential diagnosis of the conditions producing the adrenogenital syndrome. The steroids containing a keto group at C17 are readily measured by the color produced by reaction with m-dinitro-benzene (1); those conjugated with glucuronic acid can be measured either gravimetrically (2) or by determining the amount of glucuronic acid present (3), and the steroids can be actually isolated and identified. None of these procedures is simple, although the m-dinitrobenzene test for 17-ketosteroids is comparatively quick. The greatest shortcoming, however, of these methods is their failure, despite much purification and study of the fractions, to show a uniform difference between the two types of the syndrome in which hirsutism is most marked and in which the urinary excretion of the steroids is markedly increased, namely, adrenal cortical tumor and female pseudohermaphrodism with associated adrenal hyperplasia.
Allen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.