Objectives: Increased total homocysteine (tHcy) level is an independent risk factor for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Here, we describe a rapid tHcy micro-scale assay.
Methods: We developed an easy sample preparation and rapid liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for the measurement of tHcy in human serum and plasma, respectively.
Results: The tHcy assay was linear up to 61.6 micromol/L, the detection limit was 1.0 micromol/L, the lower limit of quantification was 1.8 micromol/L, the imprecision in the range of 9.30-25.9 micromol/L was less than 5.9% and the analytical recovery was 94.7 +/- 6.3%.
Conclusions: Our novel tHcy LC-MS/MS assay is a quick, precise and robust method for tHcy determination in routine diagnostics.