Metabolite profiling of small cerebrospinal fluid sample volumes with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry: Application to a rat model of multiple sclerosis

Analysis of metabolites in biofluids by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) after oximation and silylation is a key method in metabolomics. The GC-MS method was modified by a modified vial design and sample work-up procedure in order to make the method applicable to small volumes of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), i. e. 10 μL, with similar coverage compared to the standard procedure using ≥100 μL of CSF. The data quality of the modified GC-MS method was assessed by analyzing a study sample set in an animal model for multiple sclerosis, including repetitively analysed quality control rat CSF samples. Automated normalization and intra- and inter-batch correction significantly improved the data quality with the majority of metabolites showing a relative standard deviation