European researchers found normative serum androgen levels in high-level female athletes, even when considering the possible influence of menstrual status, oral contraceptive use, sport type and ethnicity, according to data published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
The findings hold promise for development of a blood steroidal module for the biological passports of athletes and could help refine policy fairness and recommendations around hyperandrogenism in elite competitors, the researchers wrote.
“This unique study showed for the first time that the androgenic parameters measured in a large sample of high-level female athletes were close to those observed in a healthy young population,” the researchers wrote.
Stéphane Bermon, MD, PhD, head of the Monaco Institute of Sports Medicine and Surgery-Exercise Physiology, and colleagues looked at 849 elite women athletes; 85.5% did not use oral contraceptives.
The researchers assessed serum testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate, androstenedione, sex hormone-binding globulin and gonadotropins using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry high resolution or immunoassay. Free testosterone was quantified.
Sampling time, age and type of athletic event showed only a small influence on testosterone concentration, and ethnicity had none. After removing five women athletes for doping and five with disorders of sex development, median testosterone and free testosterone values were similar to those reported in sedentary young women.
The 99th percentile for testosterone concentration was 3.08 nmol/L, below the 10 nmol/L competition eligibility threshold for hyperandrogenic women with normal androgen sensitivity.
In the population not on oral contraceptives, 168 were oligo- or amenorrhoic. Those using oral contraceptives demonstrated the lowest serum androgen and gonadotropin and the highest SHBG concentrations.
According to the researchers, the prevalence of the hyperandrogenic 46 XY disorder of sex development in the athletes was at approximately 7 per 1,000, 140 times higher than estimated in the general population.
“This important recruitment bias is an indirect evidence for performance-enhancing effects of hyperandrogenic disorders of sex development conditions and their associated high [testosterone] concentration in female athletes,” the researchers wrote. “But we cannot exclude that the Y chromosome in some unknown way may bring an advantage to female athletes.”
ARYAN'S BLOG 