Simple assay for urinary estrogens in nonpregnancy.

Shackleton et al. (1), Osawa and Siaunwhite 2), and Beckloff et al. (3) have recently reported simple methods for assay of steroid conjugates in urine by use of columns of Amberlite XAD-2. With Osawa and Slaunwhite’s procedure urinary estrogen conjugates can be assayed with a lower limit of detection in the micromolar range but, as implied by the authors, the assay is useful only for analysis of urine from pregnant women. We present here a simple procedure for detecting estrogens at the nanomolar level in urine of nonpregnant individuals.