Determination of free polyunsaturated fatty acids and their oxidative metabolites by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry (MS) Original Research Article

Most of free-polyunsaturated fatty acids (f-PUFA) and their oxidative metabolites are heat unstable and have low boiling point. Also, these metabolites have many isomers with complex structure. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) has been generally and widely used for the identification and/or determination of f-PUFA and their oxidative metabolites in seafood or biological samples. High-performance liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (HPLC–MS), however, is more convenient and useful for the analyses of these substances, since it requires no complicated pretreatment and shows high specificity and high sensitivityz