Analysis of highly polar metabolites in human plasma by ultra-performance hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry

Highly polar metabolites are abundant in human plasma. Analysis of these compounds by standard reverse-phase chromatography is difficult. Highly polar metabolites were extracted by a two-step method. They were analyzed by ultra-performance hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) coupled to quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometer detection technology. The middle and low polar fraction were also analyzed using a standard C18 column. Data were extracted by Markerlynx, and analyzed by multivariate statistical methods to discriminate human plasma samples by sex and age. The results not only showed good classification of samples by sex and age, but also revealed new potential biomarkers not revealed by standard RPLC/MS analysis. This study showed that HILIC is an effective technique to analyze highly polar metabolites for metabonomic studies.