Table 2.

Advantages and Limitations to Venipuncture-Alternative Hormone Collection Methods for Research Purposes

Collection Method	Common Hormones	Advantages	Limitations
Passive-drool saliva (Gröschl, 2008; Herting et al., 2021b; Liening et al., 2010)	Testosterone DHEA Estradiol Progesterone	- Non-invasive - Self-sampling and repeated sampling feasible - Cost-effective - Well-validated - Measures free hormone	- Cold storage and transport required - Cannot measure FSH and LH - Might need to correct for oral hygiene and need to eliminate contamination by blood and phlegm - Need to consider diurnal and menstrual cycling - Less well-validated for estradiol in males compared to females
Dried blood spot (Fischer et al., 2019; McDade, 2014)	DHEAS Testosterone Estradiol Progesterone FSH LH Prolactin	- Self-sampling feasible, easier to collect than venipuncture - Transportation and storage may be more cost-effective than serum or saliva storage and transport - Measures free+bound hormone (need to measure SHBG to distinguish them)	- Low sample volume - Self-collection procedures vary in how complicated and well-tolerated they are - Need to consider diurnal and menstrual cycling - Additional validation in comparison to serum samples may be needed(Fischer et al., 2019)
Hair (Byrne et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019)	DHEA Testosterone Estradiol Progesterone	- Captures average hormone levels across larger time windows, i.e. months - Easy to collect, store and transport	- Relatively new approach, more validation needed - Participants with shorter hair may not have enough for sample
Urine (Kesner et al., 1998; Singh et al., 2015)	DHEA Testosterone Estradiol Progesterone LH FSH	- Captures average levels over several hours - Self-sampling feasible - Generally accepted by participants	- Cold storage and transport required - Not well-correlated with hormone levels from other biospecimens - Need to correct for concentration of urine - How well-validated it is, depends on the hormone