Gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for the determination of alkylresorcinols in human plasma

Alkylresorcinols can be found in high amounts in whole grain cereals, especially in rye. Previously it has not been possible to measure alkylresorcinols in plasma. In this paper a validated gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for the quantitative determination of alkylresorcinols with chain lengths of C15:0, C17:0, C19:0, C21:0, and C23:0 in human plasma samples is presented. Other alkylresorcinols may be measured with the method as well, but their assay was not validated in this work. In this work also the amount of alkylresorcinol C25:0 was measured. The pretreatment of plasma samples consists of a simple incubation, an extraction with diethyl ether and a chromatographic purification before the GC-MS analysis. As internal standard an alkylresorcinol C20:0 was used. The validation of the method showed that it fulfilled the reliability criteria. Calibration graphs were linear over the range of 4.1-660 pg per injection. The mean recovery percentage was 112 +/- 10.8%. Our results show that the alkylresorcinols are found in plasma in the same ratio, as found in rye grains, according to literature. The alkylresorcinols were in the unconjugated form. The total amounts of alkylresorcinols in two plasma samples analyzed here were 333 and 381 nmol/L. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.