Chemotyping the distribution of vitamin D metabolites in human serum

Most studies examining the relationships between vitamin D and disease or health focus on the main 25-hydroxyvitamin D(3) (25(OH)D(3)) metabolite, thus potentially overlooking contributions and dynamic effects of other vitamin D metabolites, the crucial roles of several of which have been previously demonstrated. The ideal assay would determine all relevant high and low-abundant vitamin D species simultaneously. We describe a sensitive quantitative assay for determining the chemotypes of vitamin D metabolites from serum after derivatisation and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionisation-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS). We performed a validation according to the ‘FDA Guidance for Industry Bioanalytical Method Validation’. The proof-of-concept of the method was then demonstrated by following the metabolite concentrations in patients with chronic liver diseases (CLD) during the course of a vitamin D supplementation study. The new quantitative profiling assay provided highly sensitive, precise and accurate chemotypes of the vitamin D metabolic process rather than the usually determined 25(OH)D(3) concentrations.