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Background: A rapid liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for the quantification of reactive oxygen species (ROS) derived free oxysterols and cholesterol in human plasma and atherosclerotic plaque., Method: In vitro autoxidation of cholesterol during sample pretreatment was avoided by applying only one protein precipitation and re-concentration step using 80 μl plasma. For preparation of 10mg atherosclerotic plaques an additional liquid-liquid extraction was included. Free 7-keto-, 7-α/ß-hydroxy-, 5,6-α-epoxy-, 5,6-β-epoxycholesterol, cholestane-3ß,5α,6ß-triol and cholesterol were separated within 7 min on a monolithic column. An API 4000 tandem mass spectrometer was applied in positive ionization mode using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization., Results: The detection limit was 0.1 ng/ml and the linearity ranged from 0.5 to 0.75 to 2000 ng/ml for the oxysterols and from 50 to 1000 μg/ml for cholesterol. Recovery was between 80.9 and 107.9%. Between-run imprecision ranged from 7.9 to 11.7%. Analysis of plasma samples from additional 50 middle-aged volunteers revealed a large inter-individual variability (e.g. 7-ketocholesterol 2.63-30.47 ng/ml). Oxysterol concentrations normalized to cholesterol were about 43 times higher in carotid plaque compared to plasma (n=5)., Conclusion: This rapid LC-MS/MS method enables reliable quantification focused on especially ROS-derived oxysterols in human plasma and atherosclerotic plaque samples under high-throughput conditions., (© 2013. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play important physiological roles and are of particular relevance in the pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases. At inflammatory conditions, the enzyme myeloperoxidase generates hypochlorous acid (HOCl) which adds to the double bonds of fatty acyl residues of (phospho)lipids under the formation of chlorohydrins. This may lead to the development of many inflammatory diseases, such as atherosclerosis or arthritis, if the ROS generation exceeds a certain extent. Using oleic acid as the simplest unsaturated fatty acid which contains just a single double bond, as a model system, we investigated all products – including the chlorohydrin – after its reaction with HOCl by a combination of thin-layer chromatography and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Unlike the general acceptance, the reaction of oleic acid and HOCl leads not exclusively to the formation of chlorohydrin (isomers) but is much more complex: there are also considerable amounts of dimeric and (to a minor extent) trimeric products which can be assigned to isomeric ethers and esters. The obtained products after oleic acid chlorination were also compared with the reaction products of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl- sn -phosphatidylcholine (POPC) and HOCl. The reasons why different products are obtained will be discussed and the involvement of the carboxylic acid emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]