title: Determination of carnitine and acylcarnitines in urine by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization ion trap tandem mass spectrometry.
abstract: A high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of native carnitine and eight acylcarnitines in urine. The procedure uses a solid-phase extraction on a cation-exchange column and the separation is performed without derivatization within 17 min on a reversed-phase C8 column in the presence of a volatile ion-pairing reagent. The detector was an ion trap mass spectrometer and quantification was carried out in the MS-MS mode. Validation was done for aqueous standards at ranges between 0.75 and 200 micromol/l, depending on the compound. Carnitine was quantified in urine and comparison with a radioenzymatic assay gave a satisfactory correlation (R2 = 0.981). The assay could be successfully applied to the diagnostic of pathological acylcarnitines profile of metabolic disorders in urines of patients suffering from different organic acidurias.
authors.affiliation: Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University Hospital of Basel, Petersgraben 4, 4031 Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Vernez
authors.forename: Gérard
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hopfgartner
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wenk
authors.forename: Stephan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krähenbühl
mesh_terms: D002331:Carnitine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000652:urine*; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D021241:Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: C116917:acylcarnitine; D002331:Carnitine