A review of chromatographic methods for the assessment of phospholipids in biological samples.

Phospholipids are important constituents of all living cell membranes. Lipidomics is a rapidly growing field that provides insight as to how specific phospholipids play roles in normal physiological and disease states. There are many analytical methods available for the qualitative and quantitative determination of phospholipids. This review provides a summary of the methods that were historically used such as thin layer chromatography, gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. In addition, an introduction to applications of interfacing these traditional chromatographic techniques with mass spectrometry is provided.