A new metabonomics method for simultaneous determination of EFAs and NEFAs in plasma using GC-MS and its application

A new metabonomics method was developed for simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analysis on esterified and nonesterified fatty acids (EFAs and NEFAs) in plasma. Merely 10 μL of plasma was required. The pretreatment of the sample was simple without disposing the protein. After simple extraction and derivation, 15 FAs in plasma were precisely quantified. Gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was used in the study and the quantities of the analytes, which varied in abundance over three orders of magnitude. The established method showed good accuracy. The curve correlation coefficients were all above 0.997. The RSDs of precision for all compounds were below 15% and recoveries were all between 80 and 110%. PLS-DA modal was used in the data management.