Simultaneous analysis of phospholipid in rabbit bronchoalveolar lavage fluid by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry.

A method was developed to separate and simultaneously quantitate phosphatidylglycerol (PG), phosphatidylinositol (PI), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylcholine (PC), sphingomyelin (SM) and lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) in rabbit bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS). This method consisted of a simple liquid-liquid extraction procedure, separation of phospholipid classes on silica gel column by gradient mode, and detection of mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization (ESI). The precision, accuracy and recovery ranged from 1.6 to 7.6%, -0.8 to +14.7% and 69.3 to 90.0%, respectively. This method was applied to compare the content and the composition of phospholipid classes in BALF collected from inflammation-model and control rabbit. The ratio of LPC concentration to PC significantly increased in inflammation-model BALF compared with control BALF.