title: High-performance liquid chromatographic-electrospray mass spectrometric analysis of bile acids in biological fluids.
abstract: The present work describes the development of HPLC-mass spectrometric systems equipped with an electrospray interface for the quantitative analysis of bile acids. Good separation of free as well as glycine- and taurine-conjugated bile acids was achieved with a C18 reversed-phase column (3 microns particle size, 70 x 4.6 mm I.D.) employing methanol-15 mM ammonium acetate as the mobile phase for both isocratic and gradient mode, at a flow-rate of 0.3 ml/min. This system permits post-column splitting of the eluate for analysis by two different detectors: (1) electrospray-mass spectrometer with a flow-rate of 18 microliters/min; and (2) a complementary evaporative light scattering mass detector. When bile salts were ionized in the electrospray interface operating in the negative-ion mode, only [M-H]- molecular ions were generated; the detection limit was 15 pg injected for all bile acids studied. In the second system, a semi-micro pre-column splitting apparatus (Acurate, LC Packings) was utilized: with this device the flow-rate from the HPLC pump was reduced to 1.4 microliters/min and bile acids were separated with a micro-bore C18 column (3 microns particle size, 150 x 0.30 I.D.), using the same mobile phase as above. With this latter system, a head-column enrichment technique can be used: the amount injected can be increased from 60 to 200 nl, permitting an improvement in the detection limit to 5 pg injected. Application of the HPLC-electrospray-mass spectrometric method to bile and serum bile acid analysis is described; preliminary data on the ability of the first system to determine the 13C/12C isotope ratio in 13C-labeled bile acid enriched serum is also critically discussed.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università de Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roda
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Gioacchini
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Cerrè
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baraldini
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001646:Bile / Q000737:chemistry; D001647:Bile Acids and Salts / Q000032:analysis* / Q000097:blood; D001826:Body Fluids / Q000737:chemistry*; D002247:Carbon Isotopes; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D006224:Cricetinae; D006801:Humans; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D001647:Bile Acids and Salts; D002247:Carbon Isotopes