Magnesium isotopic abundance measurement in humans: comparison of two mass spectrometric methods

Pharmacokinetic studies using stable isotopes of magnesium as tracers need to determine the isotopic abundance in biological media by means of mass spectrometry. Of mass spectrometric techniques, electronic impact-mass spectrometry (EI-MS) and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) can be used. We have measured the isotopic abundance in plasma and urinary samples and compared the precision and accuracy of these two methods. Graphical representations showed that mean differences were close to 0, there was no obvious relationship between the difference and the mean, and no systematic bias was evidenced at low or high isotopic abundance. This was shown for isotopic abundance of either 25 Mg and 26 Mg. EI-MS is able to measure magnesium isotopic abundance with an intra-day precision between 0.14 and 0.45 per cent and with an inter-day precision between 0.20 and 1.23 per cent. ICP-MS exhibited an intra-day precision between 0.01 and 0.06 per cent and an inter-day precision between 0.01 and 0.15 per cent. Our results showed that, despite the similar isotopic abundances in biological samples obtained with the two methods, a large difference in precision clearly favours ICP-MS in studies of magnesium behaviour using stable isotopes.