Method for simultaneous analysis of eight analogues of vitamin D using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

Background Despite considerable global investigation over several decades, the roles of vitamin D in health and disease development remains convoluted. One recognised issue is the difficulty of accurately measuring the active forms of vitamin D. Advances made include some new methods addressing the potential interference by excluding epimers and isobars. However, there is no evidence that epimers are without function. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate, for the first time, a new assay to simultaneously measure levels of 6 forms of vitamin D along with two epimers. The assay was applied to multilevel certified reference material calibrators and 25 pooled human sera samples obtained from the Vitamin D External Quality Assessment Scheme (DEQAS) to demonstrate its efficiency. Results The assay is capable of simultaneously measuring 8 vitamin D analogues over the calibration ranges and LODs (in nmol/L) of: 1alpha25(OH)2D2 [0.015-1; 0.01], 1alpha25(OH)2D3 [0.1-100; 0.01], 25OHD3 [0.5-100, 0.025], 3-epi-25OHD3 [0.1-100, 0.05], 25OHD2 [0.5-100, 0.025], 3-epi-25OHD2 [0.1-100, 0.05], vitamin D3 [0.5-100, 0.05] and vitamin D2 [0.5-100, 0.05], using stanozolol-d3 as internal standard. Certified reference material calibrators and external quality control samples (DEQAS) were analysed to meet the standards outlined by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Validation steps included recovery and both precision and accuracy under inter- and intra-day variation limit of detection, and analysis of each analyte over a linear range. All validation parameters were in line with acceptable Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines and the standards of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). All eight analogues were quantified with the 25OHD levels being commensurate with DEQAS data. Conclusions This report details the application of a new LC-MS/MS based assay for the efficient analysis of eight analogues of vitamin D over a range of samples, which is a significant advance over the existing methods. Simultaneous measure of 8 vitamin D analogues does not compromise the analytical capability of the assay to quantify the commonly used biomarker (25OHD) for vitamin D status. The results demonstrate the feasibility of applying the assay in research and clinical practice that i) excludes misleading measures owing to epimers and isobars and ii) is able to quantify the excluded component to facilitate further in vivo investigation into the roles of ubiquitous epimers

Quantification of Methotrexate in Human Serum and Plasma by Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Mass spectrometry (MS) is a highly specific and sensitive technique that is used for the detection of many different analytes with diverse chemical characteristics. It has been adopted by clinical laboratories for the quantification of small molecules and, by extension, has been widely used for therapeutic drug monitoring. It is an attractive alternative to immunoassay methods, because it is not subject to the same interferences. A limitation of MS (relative to immunoassays) is the turnaround time. However, this can be addressed by workflow parallelization with other assays. Herein we describe a tandem LC-MS/MS method for the detection and quantification of methotrexate in human plasma with a lower limit of quantification of 0.01 μM and within-assay and between-assay coefficients of variation of less than 15%. This method lacks interference from high-abundance metabolites and utilizes kindred chromatography to improve turnaround time in the therapeutic drug monitoring laboratory