Researchers have created a new method for detecting minuscule amounts of estrogen in samples, which could help improve research into cancer and other diseases.
Estrogen has been linked to phenomena such as tumor gross and neuron loss in Alzheimer's disease, but detecting it in samples of biological fluids has proven to be difficult in the past, the University of Texas at Arlington reported.
To remedy these challenges researchers employed advanced mass spectrometry and chromatography instrumentation to detect less than 10 parts per trillion of estrogen in a 100 microliter sample.
"This new method pushes the detection limit for estrogens to a level that is applicable to research, human health, medicine, and environmental analysis. It is being instituted as a routine service for research means that all researchers now have the capability to more closely relate research model findings to human health and physiology," said Jose Barrera, director of the Shimadzu Institute and a co-author on the new paper published by the journal Analytica Chimica Acta. "This project represents the collaborative capability that the Shimadzu Institute possesses in helping augment groundbreaking research here at UT Arlington."
Many past methods of detecting estrogen used an antibody, which is a type of "protein detection system," but these types of techniques tend to me more time consuming and less reliable than the newly developed system.
"Estrogens perform important biological functions not only in sexual development and reproduction, but also in modulating many other processes impacting health and diseases in human and animals," said. Jana Beinhauer, a visiting scientist from Palacký University in the Czech Republic. "The metabolically active estrogens exert strong biological activities at very low circulating concentrations. Therefore this research is very important for finding sensitive, efficient, fast, automated and simple method how to determine the trace estrogens in serum."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Science Direct.
