Thin-layer chromatography of urinary 17-oxosteroids using dansylhydrazine as a prelabelling reagent

This paper describes a modification of a high-performance liquid chromatographic method for measurement of 17-oxosteroids in biological fluids for use with thin-layer chromatography and fluorometric scanning detection. After extraction from urine samples with Separon-C₁₈ microcolumns, free oxosteroids were labelled with dansylhydrazine in acetonitrile-acetic acid and chromatographed on silica gel F-254 plates with the solvent system chloroform—methanol (97:3). Linearity of fluorescence detection (Shimadzu CS-9000 densitometer) was obtained between 30 and 1000 ng.