Green sample pre-treatment technique coupled with UHPLC-MS/MS for the rapid biomonitoring of dietary poly-unsaturated (omega) fatty acids to predict health risks

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) consumption indicates beneficial effects on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and physiological processes in humans. However, the inappropriate ratio of omega-(omega)-PUFA levels in human blood is considered as raising the risk of CVD. Therefore, monitoring dietary omega-FAs in human serum is vital for early diagnosis for individuals to predict CVD risk. This work reports a fast green sample pre-treatment protocol for sensitive and simultaneous monitoring of omega-3-FAs and omega-6-FAs in serum by novel in-syringe-based ultrasonication-assisted alkaline hydrolysis coupled with vortex-induced liquid-liquid microextraction (IS-USAH-VILLME) technique connected with UHPLC-MS/MS analysis. Factors affecting extraction recoveries of ten omega-PUFAs by the presented method were well-studied. omega-3 and omega-6 PUFAs demonstrated excellent linearities between the concentrations between 0.1-10,000 ng mL(-1) with good regression coefficients between 0.9910-0.9997. The detection and quantification limits were between 0.05-0.35 and 0.16-1.07 ng mL(-1), demonstrating that the presented method is highly sensitive and versatile. The precision of the technique was <8.2% that deemed acceptable in clinical analysis. Further, the proposed method was applied for omega-PUFAs analysis in human blood samples, and spiked recoveries showed between 80.32-119.34% with <9.82% precision. Results proved that the developed method is green, sensitive, and reliable to simultaneously determine ten omega-PUFAs in human blood samples for clinical diagnosis applications for predicting health hazards.

Automated summary

This study developed a fast green sample pre-treatment protocol for sensitive and simultaneous monitoring of ω-3-FAs and ω-6-FAs in serum. The developed method showed high sensitivity, reliability, and applicability for clinical diagnosis in predicting health hazards.