Patent ID: 7011977

Claim:
A method for quantifying the carnitine concentration in a dialysis patient, comprising: obtaining one or more patient samples, said patient samples containing plasma collected from said patient; obtaining a plurality of calibration curve samples; preparing a plurality of patient samples and said calibration curve samples for analysis; analyzing said patient samples to produce patient data and said calibration curve samples to produce calibration curve data; comparing said patient data to said calibration curve data to obtain carnitine concentration data, said carnitine concentration data including a free carnitine concentration and an acetylcarnitine concentration for each patient sample; and, correcting said free carnitine concentration and said acetylcarnitine concentration to account for any errors introduced by hydrolysis or glutamic acid presence, said correcting also obtaining a quantified free carnitine concentration, a quantified total acylcarnitine concentration, and a quantified total carnitine concentration for each patient sample.