Accurate Clinical Detection of Vitamin D by Mass Spectrometry: A Review

Abstract

Vitamin D deficiency is thought to be associated with a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, depression, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. This vitamin D deficiency is a global epidemic affecting both developing and developed countries and therefore qualitative and quantitative analysis of vitamin D in a clinical context is essential. Mass spectrometry has played an increasingly important role in the clinical analysis of vitamin D because of its accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and the ability to detect multiple substances at the same time. Despite their many advantages, mass spectrometry-based methods are not without analytical challenges. Front-end and back-end challenges such as protein precipitation, analyte extraction, derivatization, mass spectrometer functionality, must be carefully considered to provide accurate and robust analysis of vitamin D through a well-designed approach with continuous control by internal and external quality control. Therefore, the aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of mass spectrometry methods for vitamin D accurate analysis, including emphasis on status markers, deleterious effects of biological matrices, derivatization reactions, effects of ionization sources, contribution of epimers, standardization of assays between laboratories.

Keywords:

• Mass spectrometry
• vitamin D
• sample pretreatment
• derivatization method
• C3 epimers
• measurement standardization
• accurate detection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

ZX conducted all primary research, performed data analysis, and wrote manuscript. KY and JJ establish review idea, directed the work and finalized the manuscript. MZ, YJ, JH and YL contributed to collecting information, constructing tables, discussing the results, and initiating diagrams. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22074026), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2022QB248) and the Scientific Research Foundation of Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai (No. HIT (WH) 2022).