Dried Urine Test for Comprehensive Hormones

The DUTCH test is a urine steroid hormone profile that measures hormones and hormone metabolites (called conjugates) in a dried urine sample, and is performed from the comfort of your home. It is the most cutting-edge way to truly see what’s going on when it comes to your hormones, because it doesn’t just measure hormones, but also something called “metabolites”, which are a measurement of hormone production and hormone breakdown.

Measuring both hormones and their metabolites can give you or your health care practitioner a much better overall picture of hormone production. For example, a DUTCH urine steroid hormone profile on someone with low salivary cortisol could show normal cortisol production, but high levels of metabolites. In other words, this would
indicate that you are producing enough cortisol, but it’s just getting broken down into its metabolites very quickly.

There are also some metabolites that are important markers for cancer risk that can only be measured in urine.
With serum (blood) and saliva hormone spot-testing, it’s possible to track variations in hormone release throughout the day – and this is a great way to measure how your hormones change during a 24-hour
period (your circadian rhythm). In contrast, a standard 24-hour urine collection many physicians use reflects your total hormone output in a 24-hour period.

But by using the DUTCH urine steroid test, you get the best of all worlds: blood, saliva and urinary results with just a urine collection.

DUTCH^TM vs Saliva Testing – While the free cortisol pattern in saliva has clinical value, there is a significant missing piece to ? A patient’s HPA-axis function with saliva testing – measuring cortisol metabolites.  To properly characterize a patient’s cortisol status, free and metabolized cortisol should be measured to avoid misleading results when cortisol clearance is abnormally high or low.  Likewise with sex hormones, measuring estrogen and androgen metabolites gives a fuller picture for more precise clinical diagnosis of hormonal imbalances and HRT monitoring.

DUTCH^TM vs Serum Testing – While serum is the most universally accepted testing method (due to the availability of FDA-cleared analyzers that are reliable and inexpensive), it is lacking in some areas.  Adrenal hormones cannot be effectively tested in serum because free cortisol cannot be tested throughout the day.  There is also a lack of extensive metabolite testing (especially for cortisol and estrogens).

DUTCH^TM vs 24-hour Urine Testing – There are two primary drawbacks to urine testing of hormones.  First, the collection is cumbersome, and as many as 40% of those who collect, do so in error (Tanaka, 2002).  Secondly, dysfunction in the diurnal pattern of cortisol cannot be ascertained from a 24-hour collection.  Some providers add saliva for daily free cortisol.  DUTCH^TM eliminates the need for two tests.