Sugars or saccharides exist as structural and stereo- isomers and can be difficult to analyse, due to insufficient analyte separation. By coupling chromatography with mass spectrometry, the reliability of the analysis can be improved, but there is still potential for erroneous results due to the vast array of saccharide isomers present in nature. In this study, we present a method for the analysis of 80 saccharides analysed using an ion chromatograph coupled to a mass spectrometer. The method successfully separated, identified and quantitated 21 monosaccharides, 28 disaccharides, 15 trisaccharides, 7 tetrasaccharides, and 9 sugar alcohols. The feasibility of this method was demonstrated through the analysis of commercially available rare and common sugar samples, as well as honeys. While the method showed promising results for these compounds, further validation will be required to determine its applicability in more stringent fields such as forensics and clinical analysis.
Yates et al. (Wed,) studied this question.