Determination of selected fatty acids in dried blood spot by gas chromatography-flame ionization detection

Abstract

With the aim to minimize the amount of biological material needed for analysis, a new type of sample preparation has been used for the determination of the percentage content of fatty acids in human blood. The blood samples from the volunteers (n = 30) were processed in two ways, as a plasma and as dried blood spot (DBS) samples. The fatty acids were firstly derivatized into the respective esters and, subsequently, separated and detected using gas chromatography (GC) with a flame ionization detector (FID). The results obtained from the DBS sample analysis were compared with those obtained by the established method for the determination of fatty acids in plasma.