Recent Developments in Capillary Electrophoresis of Steroids and Sterols

Steroid hormones are intensively studied from environmental water systems. In environmental samples their concentrations are very low, but their quantities are not meaningless since steroids belong to the group of endocrine disruptors, causing cancer and developmental disorders in humans. On the contrary, only a few recent articles deal with the research of plant steroid alcohols (sterols) in biological and environmental water systems. The reason may be that sterols are not categorized as high-risk contaminants, although their chemical structures are similar with the human steroids. Mostly, steroids are analyzed with chromatography and mass spectrometry. In addition, capillary electrophoresis has shown to be a promising separation technique in metabolic studies because of the possibility to obtain simultaneous differentiation of glucosides and the corresponding native steroids. That is not easily processed in chromatography. This review highlights the determination of human and plant steroids detected in biological samples and environmental water systems with capillary electrophoresis.