Simultaneous Determination of Vitamins A and E and Their Generated Metabolites in Human Serum by LC–MS/MS

In the context of personalized and precision medicine, simultaneous monitoring of different forms of vitamins A and E and their metabolites could help us better understand the status of vitamins A and E in the body. The aim of this study was to establish a method for simultaneous determination of 13 kinds of vitamins A and E and their metabolites in human serum. Serum samples were directly detected by LC–MS/MS after deproteinization. Chromatographic and mass spectrometry parameters were optimized to achieve good separation and sensitivity for these analytes, especially for isomers. Finally, all analytes were effectively separated on Kinetex biphenyl stationary phase. The method covered a large profile of vitamins A and E and their metabolites in a run time only of 10 min. Good linearities were achieved in the quantitative range for each analyte with the correlation coefficients higher than 0.9916. The recoveries were in the range of 78.8%–111.6% with the intraday and interday precisions within 9.6%. This method was simple, sensitive, and accurate and had been successfully applied for the determination of vitamins A and E and their metabolites in human serum samples and could provide technical support for clinical nutritional evaluation of these vitamins.