Profiles of volatile metabolities in body fluids

A method for the analysis of volatile metabolites present in plasma, urine, breast milk and amniotic fluid collected from mother-infant pairs has been developed which requires only 100 mul of plasma, 3 ml of urine, 20 mul of breast milk and 500 mul of amniotic fluid. After extraction with diethyl ether, the volatile compounds were absorbed on glass wool in a special concentration tube and subsequently desorbed and transferred to a 100-m nickel capillary column for analysis by gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The separations, carried out by temperature programming, were complete in 90 min.