If you’ve used saliva testing for topical hormones, you know that it can be a challenge. Why? Because “normal” levels of hormones like progesterone are supraphysiological, even at modest doses. Why is this? That has been covered in a previous blog, and if you’re new to this topic it may be worth your time to read. To make sense of topical hormones, you need to know what women’s levels typically are given the particular dosage of interest. ZRT Laboratory can provide this data and it will help you to make sense of salivary results.
You can find a more comprehensive listing of progesterone, estradiol, and testosterone (men) here. For the purpose of this blog, let’s just consider progesterone.
- You need to have tested 12 or 24 hours after the last dose (ranges for other time points are not available) and select the appropriate graph.
- Find the dose used (x-axis) and move vertically until you find the patient’s result (y-axis).
This will tell you how your patients results compare to what is expected given this particular scenario. The data has been generated from tens of thousands of saliva results from individuals using hormonal supplementation. The line in the middle represents the average (median) patient’s result on the relevant dosage. The top and bottom lines make a reference range for the particular dosage of interest. The top line represents the 80th percentile, and the bottom line represents the 20th percentile. This effectively gives a reference range for all dosage found on the x-axis at either 12 or 24 hours after supplementation. Values significantly higher than the 80th percentile may be due to sample contamination. Note: being within the reference range for a particular dosage is, in no way, an endorsement of that particular supplementation regiment.
Here is an example for your consideration:
Topical Progesterone, 12 hours:
Topical Progesterone, 24 hours:
Please see ZRT Laboratory Ranges & Dosage for more information
