A fast liquid chromatographic tandem mass spectrometric method for the simultaneous determination of total homocysteine and methylmalonic acid.

A liquid chromatography(LC)/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (MS) method for the quantitative determination of total homocysteine and methylmalonic acid and the monitoring of methionine, homocystine and succinic acid in plasma has been developed. The analytes are determined under the presence of the deuterated internal standards methylmalonic acid-d (3) and homocystine-d (8). Although methylmalonic acid can be determined directly, a reduction step has to be carried out to ensure the measurement of total homocysteine.