Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of panel of neurotransmitters in cerebrospinal fluid from the rat model for tauopathy

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is still being recognized today as an unmet medical need. Currently, there is no cure and early preclinical diagnostic assay available for AD. Therefore much attention is now being directed at the development of novel methods for quantitative determination of AD biomarkers in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Here, we describe the liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of 5-hydroxytryptamine (SER), 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), homovanilic acid (HVA), noradrenaline (NADR), adrenaline (ADR), dopamine (DA), glutamic acid (Glu), γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) and histamine (HIS) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the rat model for human tauopathy. The benzoyl chloride was used as pre-column derivatization reagents. Neurotransmitters and metabolites were analysed on ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) on C18 column in combination with tandem mass spectrometry. The method is simple, highly sensitive and showed excellent linearity with regression coefficients higher than 0.99. The accuracy was in a range of 93-113% for all analytes. The inter-day precision (n=5 days), expressed as %RSD, was in a range 2-10% for all analytes. Using this method we detected significant changes of CSF levels of two important neurotransmitters/metabolites, ADR and 5-HIAA, which correlates with progression of neurodegeneration in our animal model.