Total cholesterol, fatty acids, and plasmalogens can be reliably quantitated by analysis on chromarods after the methylation step required for fatty acid analysis by gas-liquid chromatography.

A new method of simultaneous quantitation of total fatty acids, plasmalogens, and cholesterol using thin-layer chromatography with flame-ionization detection (TLC-FID) is presented. This method only requires methanolysis of the crude lipid extracts, an operation usually performed for fatty acid analysis by gas-liquid chromatography (GLC), and both analyses can thus be carried out in one step. Because of its resolution power and sensitivity, the TLC-FID technique can be used to analyze microsamples routinely assayed in capillary GLC (less than 15 micrograms of total fatty acids). The data obtained by capillary GLC and those provided by TLC-FID after careful individual calibration of the rods are almost identical. Reproducibility of the TLC-FID measurements is lower for fatty acid methyl esters and dimethylacetals, but equivalent for cholesterol quantitation, if the samples are analyzed twice on chromarods.