A simple high-performance liquid chromatographic method using UV detection was developed for the determination of alpha-tocopherol in human plasma. The method entailed direct injection of the plasma sample after deproteinization using acetonitrile-tetrahydrofuran (3:2). The mobile phase comprised methanol-tetrahydrofuran (94:6) and analysis was run at a flow-rate of 1.5 ml/min with the detector operating at 292 nm. A Crestpak C18S (5 microm, 250 mm x 4.6 mm ID) was used for the chromatographic separation. The method had a mean recovery of 93%, while the within-day and between-day coefficients of variation and percentage errors were all less than 7%. The speed, specificity, sensitivity and reproducibility of this method make it particularly suitable for routine determination of alpha-tocopherol in human plasma. Moreover, only a small sample plasma volume (100 microl) is required for the analysis.