math
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Recovering Testosterone ?
hello people,
I was wondering it it's possible to recover excreted testosterone
from human urine, as it's the main pathway of excretion (about 90%).
Or at least recover it along with the less number possible of other compounds.
Thank you in advance
[Edited on 27-8-2008 by math]
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panziandi
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I'd imagine the concentration in human urine to be quite low (unless you were on testosterone supplements) so you would have to concentrate the urine
down, evaporation of lots of water... Now alot of other compounds are dissolved in urine so you are likely going to have lots of solid crystalise out.
then you would have to wash these crystals with a suitable solvent to dissolve steroids and then concentrate that down... Now I'm not trying to sound
pessimistic but I can't see it being feasible myself. And if it was feasible it would be very smelly and very time consuming with a low yield etc etc
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ScienceSquirrel
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It is if you are prepared to collect huge amounts of urine and evaporate it.
Lots of other things will drop out on the way eg sodium chloride, urea etc so get ready for some serious clean up.
Most of the mammalian sex hormones were isolated this way.
I had some of the original papers at one stage and huge amounts of urine were used to isolate hundreds of mgs of the hormones.
A friend of mine was involved in isolating drug metabolites from urine, she only had a few tens of litres of the stuff and it ponged.
Isolating testosterone will require hundreds of gallons...
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12AX7
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I recall seeing traditional medicine (e.g. Chinese) on TV, among which was a large couldron of boiling urine, bull's urine I believe, of which it was
noted the crust which forms up on the side has beneficial effects. Of course all kinds of crazy things are believed to have benefits, but I suppose
this was tested and found to contain a certain concentration of hormones. No coincidence that this product was traditionally used for the kinds of
things testosterone is used to treat.
There's elemental phosphorous in there, too, if you want to persue it. 
Tim
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ScienceSquirrel
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| Quote: | Originally posted by 12AX7
I recall seeing traditional medicine (e.g. Chinese) on TV, among which was a large couldron of boiling urine, bull's urine I believe, of which it was
noted the crust which forms up on the side has beneficial effects. Of course all kinds of crazy things are believed to have benefits, but I suppose
this was tested and found to contain a certain concentration of hormones. No coincidence that this product was traditionally used for the kinds of
things testosterone is used to treat.
There's elemental phosphorous in there, too, if you want to persue it.
Tim |
Large cauldron of boiling urine....
'Cough'
Take it from me, 25 litres of boiling urine stinks 
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tapira1
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Recovering Test
There are steroidal hormones capable of being recovered from urine; equilenin is one of them; however, the cost of recovering test from human urine is
overwhelmingly high to be dçfeasible in a small scale.
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JohnWW
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What do you want the testosterone for - to become an Olympic steroid drug cheat? Incidentally, natural testosterone is chiral (optically active),
while synthetic testosterone and its derivatives consists of a racemic mixture of the two enantiomers. It is this feature that enables the sports
drug-testers to distinguish between natural (presumably from testicles and adrenals) and exogenous synthetic testosterone.
However, testosterone, which is initially converted to the much more biologically active dihydrotestosterone by the enzyme 5-alpha-dihydrogenase, is
very quickly degraded to only very weakly androgenic steroids, such as androstenedione, and to some extent estrogens, by the liver, before excretion.
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unionised
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| Quote: | Originally posted by JohnWW
What do you want the testosterone for - to become an Olympic steroid drug cheat? Incidentally, natural testosterone is chiral (optically active),
while synthetic testosterone and its derivatives consists of a racemic mixture of the two enantiomers. It is this feature that enables the sports
drug-testers to distinguish between natural (presumably from testicles and adrenals) and exogenous synthetic testosterone.
However, testosterone, which is initially converted to the much more biologically active dihydrotestosterone by the enzyme 5-alpha-dihydrogenase, is
very quickly degraded to only very weakly androgenic steroids, such as androstenedione, and to some extent estrogens, by the liver, before excretion.
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Are you sure about the chirality?
I know that many drugs are made and sold as single enantiomers.
I think that they try to catch cheats by looking at the ratios of testosterone to its precursors and metabolites.
Anyway, to get back somewhere near the OP, the steroids are practically insouble in water so they are excreted as conjugates with other materials to
make them soluble. Not only would you need a lot of urine, but you would need to do some chemistry on it.
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no1uno
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If you live in a rural area, sheep, horse & cattle testicles are removed and discarded on a massive scale. I'd have to say that solvent extraction
of them (fun job, you can have it) would probably be a better route than trying to isolate it from urine.
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panziandi
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I was going to suggest that! You could try a local butcher or slaughter house for them as they can be eaten but are generally discarded! Grim
thought!
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