Quantification of Plasma and Leukocyte Vitamin C by High Performance Liquid Chromatography with Mass Spectrometric Detection

In the present study a high performance liquid chromatographic–mass spectrometric (LC–MS) method was developed for the measurement of ascorbic acid in human plasma and white blood cells. Special attention was paid to the known difficulties of ascorbic acid stability, and a plasma sample preparation method was developed, accordingly. The novel objective of this work was to focus on the determination of plasma ascorbic acid concentrations considering the necessity of accurate determination for further clinical studies related to scurvy induced by various pathological conditions. The presented study describes in detail a validated LC–MS method with adequate accuracy and precision for quantitative determination of ascorbic acid in human plasma. The method was tested on human plasma and leukocyte samples.