An oral-diffusion-sink device for extended sampling of multiple steroid hormones from saliva

Performance of a new oral-diffusion-sink (ODS) device for sampling the steroid hormones cortisol, progesterone, estradiol, and testosterone from human saliva was tested in vitro. The tested device differed from an earlier ODS sampler by using a polymeric composition of beta-cyclodextrin rather than an antiserum to bind analytes diffusing into the device. The capacity of the cyclodextrin-driven device to accumulate the steroid hormones from a simple buffer, human saliva, and saliva fortified with high concentrations of glucocorticosteroids was evaluated. Further, the ability of this device to accurately register the average analyte concentration resulting from treatments simulating physiological episodic secretion events was tested. Each steroid showed a characteristic rate of uptake that was unaffected by saliva or high physiological concentrations of competing steroids, and ODS uptake resulting from temporally varied concentrations of the hormone in the medium accurately reflected the time-integrated average concentration. This ODS provides a potential noninvasive and unobtrusive means of sampling the tissue-available concentrations of multiple steroid hormones, with averaging over physiological secretion events.