Glucose is a common medical analyte measuring in human serum or blood samples. The development of a primary method is necessary for the establishment of traceability in measurements. We have developed an isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry as a primary method for the measurement of glucose in human serum. Glucose and glucose- 13C 6 in sample were ionized in ESI negative mode and monitored at mass transfers of m/z 179/89 and 185/92 in MRM, respectively. Glucose was separated on NH 2 P-50 2D column, and the mobile phase was 20 mM NH 4 OAc in 30% acetonitrile/70% water. Verification of this method was performed by the comparison with NIST SRMs. Our results agreed well with the SRM values. We have developed two levels of glucose serum certified reference material using this method and distributed them to the clinical laboratories in Korea as samples for proficiency testings. The expended uncertainty was about 1.2% on 95% confidence level. In proficiency testings, the results obtained from the clinical laboratories showed about 3.6% and 3.9% RSD to the certified values. Primary method can provide the traceability to the field laboratories through proficiency testings or certified reference materials.

An isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was developed as a primary method for the quantitative analysis of cholesterol in infant formula. Cholesterol-d 4 was used as an internal standard and spiked into the infant formula sample. In order to release cholesterol out of cholesteryl ester, which is cholesterol bound to fatty acids in infant formula, saponification was carried out. Saponification conditions were optimized with heating temperature, reaction time and the concentration of KOH. The optimum conditions were as follows; heating temperature was 70 o C, reaction time was 180 min and the concentration of KOH was 0.8 mL of 8 M KOH for about 0.1 g infant formula sample. Extraction of cholesterol out of sample solution was carried out with hexane uisng liquid-liquid extraction. Chromatographic analysis was carried out using Phenomenex Kinetex C 18 column. Mobile phase was 0.1% acetic acid in methanol/water (v/v, 99/1) and flow rate was 0.3 mL/min. Cholesterol and cholesterol-d 4 were monitored at mass transfer m/z 369/259 and 373/ 263 respectively. Reproducibility of the method was evaluated to be 0.23% of the measurement result. The expanded uncertainty of the measurement result of cholesterol in infant formula was approximately 1.9% at a 95% confidence level. NIST standard reference material having certified values of cholesterol in infant formula, was analyzed in order to verify this method. The ID-LC/MS/MS results were well agreed with the certified values of NIST SRM within the uncertainty.