[Exploration of the clinical pathway for etiological diagnostics of androgen excess in female].

Androgen excess is a common endocrine and metabolic problem in clinical practice, which affects the health of women throughout their life cycle. Usually, its diagnosis and treatment need multidisciplinary cooperation. The etiological diagnosis of female hyperandrogenism should be based on the etiological characteristics at different ages and should be comprehensively evaluated from medical history, physical examination, determination of androgen and other endocrine hormones, functional tests, imaging, and genetic testing, etc. The general principle of androgen excess cause diagnosis is first to determine whether the patient has clinical and/or biochemical androgen excess, then determine whether she conforms to the diagnostic criteria of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and then determine whether it is a specific disease or not. Finally, mass spectrometry should be adopted for verifying the androgen levels in those without clear causes found to exclude pseudo-elevation, thus it can be diagnosed as idiopathic androgen excess. Exploring the clinical pathway for the etiological diagnosis of female hyperandrogenism has important reference significance for guiding the standardized and accurate diagnosis and treatment of female hyperandrogenism.