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Updated: May 21, 2026

Cholesterol Efflux Assay
Published on: March 6, 2012
Implication of free cholesterol in LC-MS response enhancement
Robert MacNeill1, Amy Farside, Vishva Acharya
1Department of Bioanalytical Services, Huntingdon Life Sciences, Mettlers Road, East Millstone, NJ 08875-2360, USA. macneillr@princeton.huntingdon.com
Background:
In the context of matrix effects in bioanalytical LC-MS/MS, a speculative link between free cholesterol, the recoveries of the compound from three common extraction procedures, and response enhancement was qualitatively investigated.
Results:
Injections on-column of cholesterol both in solution and extracts, in conjunction with post-column infusion of three representative drugs, reveal a direct role in pronounced response enhancement for two out of three analytes, under one set of LC-MS/MS conditions, for the majority of typical plasma extraction procedures, where electrospray-based gaseous ion generation is used.
Conclusion:
Cholesterol has been shown to have a strong association with LC-MS/MS response enhancement and ideally should be monitored during method development, reinforcing the reasoning behind minimizing SPE elution volumes and avoiding less selective means of sample preparation.
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