Direct solid-phase enzymoimmunoassay of testosterone in saliva

This competitive, solid-phase enzymoimmunoassay for testosterone in saliva is carried out on microtiter plates and involves no chromatographic or extraction steps. With an overnight incubation the detection limit of the assay is 230 fg per well (16.1 pmol/L). There was good correlation (correlation coefficient 0.95) between testosterone concentrations measured with and without prior extraction of the saliva samples. Repeated assay of three control saliva samples containing a range of testosterone concentrations (200-1000 pmol/L) gave within- and between-assay coefficients of variation of 5.5-13.2%. The analytical procedure is simple and closely resembles already published procedures for the determination of progesterone and estrone (with extraction) in saliva. One person can assay 200 samples in 24 h and the assay is suitable for reproductive and sports medical applications, particularly for projects involving serial sampling and yielding large numbers of samples.