Dynamic monitoring of total plasma homocysteine in spontaneously hypertensive rats by LC-MS.

Hypertension has been recognized to be closely related to plasma homocysteine levels (tHcy). Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) are used widely for hypertension research, but it is unclear whether hypertension is related to high levels of tHcy in rat plasma. To test whether hyperhomocysteinemia occurs in SHR we dynamically measured plasma total homocysteine (tHcy) in SHR by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS). This analytical method has good linearity within the range of 1-100 micromol/L for tHcy in rat plasma with a correlation coefficient of R = 0.9975. After dynamic monitoring (12 weeks) on the plasma tHcy in SHR and Wistar-Kyoto rats, we found that there was no significant difference in tHcy level between SHR and Wistar-Kyoto rats, which was 6.98 +/- 1.82 micromol/L and 8.04 +/- 1.64 micromol/L, respectively. And there was no significantly high level of plasma tHcy in SHR.