Aldehyde analysis by high performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry.

This paper describes the development of a high performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometric (MS/MS) procedure for the specific qualitative and quantitative analysis of lipid aldehydes in biological matrices. A derivatisation method, which results in molecules that exhibit a common product ion on MS/MS, permits informative precursor ion scans, at high sensitivity. This has been applied to the examination of plasma in order to examine the production of aldehydes consequent on in vitro lipid oxidation. Quantitative analysis of target molecules using multiple reaction monitoring has been developed to permit quantitation in the same matrices.