Monitoring octanoic and decanoic acids in plasma from children with intractable epilepsy treated with medium-chain triglyceride diet.

We describe a procedure for gas-chromatographic determination of n-octanoic and n-decanoic acids in 100 microL of plasma from children with intractable epilepsy treated with medium-chain triglyceride (MCT) diet. With n-nonanoic acid as the internal standard, the extraction efficiencies for octanoic and decanoic acids were 98 and 105%, respectively. Within-run CVs for octanoic acid at 0.5, 1.0, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, and 10.0 micrograms/0.1 mL were 8.8, 7.9, 8.5, 6.5, 4.3, and 5.7%, respectively. For decanoic acid at identical concentrations, the CVs were 10.0, 7.4, 4.9, 4.0, 2.6, and 3.5%, respectively. For 10 children on MCT diet (45.9% of calories supplied as MCT) the mean concentrations of octanoic and decanoic acids were 44.2 and 27.0 mg/L, respectively. Presence of relatively "high" quantities of these acids in plasma may contribute to seizure control when MCT diet is prescribed for intractable childhood epilepsy.