Extended and Fully Automated Newborn Screening Method for Mass Spectrometry Detection.

A new and fully automated newborn screening method for mass spectrometry was introduced in this paper. Pathological relevant amino acids, acylcarnitines, and certain steroids are detected within 4 min per sample. Each sample is treated in an automated and standardized workflow, where a mixture of deuterated internal standards is sprayed onto the sample before extraction. All compounds showed good linearity, and intra- and inter-day variation lies within the acceptance criteria (except for aspartic acid). The described workflow decreases analysis cost and labor while improving the sample traceability towards good laboratory practice.
Competing Interests: Conflicts of InterestJana Rykl is an employee of Shimadzu Schweiz GmbH (Reinach, Switzerland) and Stefan Gaugler is an employee of CAMAG (Muttenz, Switzerland). None of the other authors report any conflict of interest regarding this study. One DBS-MS 500 was setup at the Children´s Hospital as part of this KTI project. All other instrumentation is property of the respective companies and Children´s Hospital.
(© 2017 by the authors.)