Alcohol is more often unpleasant and causes tissue damage more rapidly in women than men. The present study was designed to find out whether acetaldehyde, the primary metabolite of alcohol, could play a crucial role in these actions. Special emphasis was focused on the appropriate determination of blood acetaldehyde and hormonal factors. Occurrence of elevated blood acetaldehyde levels during alcohol oxidation was established in both normally cycling women and ones taking oral contraceptives, but not in men. An association between elevated acetaldehyde levels and high estrogen phases was observed in both groups of women. Estrogen-related acetaldehyde elevation is suggested to be the key factor explaining the gender differences of the adverse effects of alcohol.

Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) is dimeric glycoprotein produced by placenta in pregnancy and also in low levels by pituitary gland. The main clinical use for exogenous hCG-administration is typically linked to infertility. The desired effect of hCG misuse in sport is due to the enhancement of testicular production of testosterone. Therefore, hCG is listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as a prohibited substance in male athletes and according to the recently published WADA guideline urinary concentrations of hCG > 5 IU/L may be an indicator of doping. In this study two independent immunoassays were used to implement the new WADA guideline. The assay for initial testing (Siemens Immulite 2000 XPi hCG assay) recognizes various hCG variants (e.g. hCG and β-core fragment of hCG) whereas the confirmatory assay (PerkinElmer DELFIA Xpress hCG) is sensitive to intact and nicked hCG only. Both assays showed adequate sensitivity and were proven fit-for-purpose in routine doping control. Population-based distribution of the assays was in good agreement with results of earlier studies and supported well the current threshold of 5 IU/L.

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The present report describes an evaluation in three laboratories of the completely automated total homocysteine immunoassay adapted to the IMMULITE 2000 from DPC. The precision depended on the control materials used, but with quality control materials and patient samples imprecisions were found to be in the range of 5.3 to 6.1% and 5.4 to 6.0%, respectively. Dilution experiments proved the assay to be linear and correlations with HPLC and GC-MS methods were close (r=0.98 and 0.97, respectively). In addition, the samples from the Nordic program for external quality assessment of methylmalonic acid and homocysteine for 2000 were assayed in the three laboratories. Imprecision evaluated from these samples was 5.3% and the recovery of the added L-homocystine was equivalent to the mean recovery of the 58 participants in the program. The precision is close to the quality goals. In conclusion, the method is an attractive alternative when coping with an increasing number of requests for the analysis of total homocysteine.