The clinical usefulness of 3 alpha-androstanediol glucuronide in premenopausal women with hirsutism

A biochemical parameter correlating with the clinical assessment of the severity of hirsutism and changing appropriately with the clinical response to treatment would be extremely useful. Preliminary reports of androstanediol glucuronide indicated that it was a peripherally-derived androgen and had a high correlation with clinical gradings of hirsutism. More recent reports have cast doubts on this association. This paper presents an evaluation of the clinical usefulness of androstanediol in 121 consecutive premenopausal patients with hirsutism. Androstanediol had a positive correlation with the clinical grading of hirsutism (p < 0.02) and the BMI (p < 0.01) but a negative correlation with age (p < 0.01). After adjustment for the effects of age and BMI there was no significant association between the degree of hirsutism and the level of androstanediol.