Authors: Jason M Franasiak Semara Thomas Susan Ng Maria Fano Andrew Ruiz Richard T Scott Eric J Forman
Publish Date: 2016/01/12
Volume: 33, Issue: 3, Pages: 387-391
Abstract
Dehydroepiandrosterone DHEA is often prescribed for poor responders in IVF in an effort to improve response to ovarian stimulation The effect of DHEA supplementation and resultant supraphysiologic DHEAS serum levels on sex steroid assays has not been evaluated in this population This study seeks to determine the relationship between DHEA supplementation and progesterone measurements to characterize the degree of interference with particular immunoassaysCharacterization was accomplished in two phases First DHEAS standard control reagents with no progesterone present were assayed for both DHEAS and progesterone levels Second serum pools from 60 unique IVF patients’ serum were used to create six pooled serum samples three from patients on DHEA supplementation and three from patients not on DHEA supplementation The three pools were composed of patients whose serum fell into low medium and high progesterone ranges Baseline DHEAS and progesterone were measured and the mean level of DHEAS in the midrange progesterone pool was used as the midpoint for addition of DHEAS standard to the serum pools from patients without DHEA supplementation Progesterone from these pools was then measured on three commercially available immunoassay systemsThe first experiment revealed a linear increase in progesterone when analyzing the DHEAS standard ranging from 05 ng/mL in the blank control no DHEAS to up to 20 ng/mL in the high control DHEAS 700 μg/mL indicating that the DHEAS crossreacts with the progesterone assays In the second experiment patients’ serum DHEAS and progesterone were measured from pooled serum samples of those taking DHEA and those not taking DHEA Adding DHEAS to the pooled serum of those not taking DHEA resulted in a linear increase in progesterone levels on two of three commercially available immunoassays p 005
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