title: Orotic acid quantification in dried blood spots and biological fluids by hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.
abstract: Orotic acid (ORA) is an intermediate metabolite in the pathway of pyrimidine nucleotides; its urinary excretion is useful to diagnose the hereditary orotic aciduria and some hyperammonemic inherited defects of urea cycle enzymes and amino acid transporters. ORA analysis is based on stable isotope dilution by GC-MS or LC-MS/MS methods. We developed a fast assay that measures the ORA in dried blood spots (DBS), plasma and urine using hydrophilic interaction LC-MS/MS. Within- and between-day analytical imprecision (CV%) of three quality control levels, in plasma, DBS and urine, ranged from 0.8 to 14.1%, while the inaccuracy ranged from -13.5 to 9.4%. In healthy children (n=20), ORA concentrations were less than 0.69 microM in plasma, less than 0.82 microM in DBS and from 0.2 to 1.4 mmol/mol of creatinine in urine. A patient with citrullinemia showed ORA levels of 133 microM in plasma and 39 microM in DBS. A patient with hyperammonemia-hyperornithinemia-homocitrullinemia (HHH) syndrome presented a urinary ORA level of 9.1 mmol/mol of creatinine. The method is potentially able to discriminate affected patients from reference subjects; the clinical validation should be expanded on a higher number of patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Foggia, Foggia, Italy.
authors.forename: Oceania
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: D'Apolito
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Garofalo
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Paglia
authors.forename: Alfredo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zuppaldi
authors.forename: Gaetano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Corso
mesh_terms: D002138:Calibration; D002648:Child; D002853:Chromatography, Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D057230:Limit of Detection; D009963:Orotic Acid / Q000097:blood*; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D053719:Tandem Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D009963:Orotic Acid