I wish to perform metabolite analysis of human blood using GC-MS. Should I use trisodium citrate, EDTA or heparin as anticoagulant for plasma separation or should I use serum for the analysis?
Dear Rupamoni, I have rather good experiences with K3-EDTA, as anticoagulant for blood samples, in metabolite profiling. The blood samples are centrifuged within 20-30 minutes of taking, and only the blood plasma is used hereupon. Although I use HPLC-MS/MS and not GC-MS, I don't think that it makes big difference.
Depends on the metabolites you are trying to quantify. EDTA, for example, is rich in potassium and because of that it can give you falsely high potassium levels. You can run GC-MS on plasma then identify (by deduction) the peaks corresponding to the clotting factors, then use serum for the follow up tests which will make the workflow more straightforward.
Dear Dr. Thakur,
I think sodium citrate is the best choice for this kind of experiments.
Heparin is a polymeric-glucosaminoglycan that can potentially bind to the nucleic acids of WBC and might give false results.
In case of EDTA, which is a metal chelator that can not only bind to calcium but also binds to Mg2+ ions, again same problem might come with results.
Sodium citrate binds to calcium and causes anticoagulation of blood. There is no other probable reaction with other ions and components of blood.
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