Determination of vitamin B12 in dry mixtures for baby food by the method of high performance liquid chromatography with chromatomass-spectrometric detection

Abstract

Relevance. Vitamin B12 (cobalamin) belongs to the group of water-soluble vitamins. This vitamin belongs to the class of tetrapyrroles, biologically active substances consisting of pyrrole rings associated with metal ions. So, in the vitamin B12 molecule, the core is the cobalt ion. A feature of this vitamin is that its synthesis in nature is carried out only by bacteria, and therefore, it is present only in products of animal origin. And one of the sources of its receipt is milk and dairy products, including those enriched with B vitamins. Low concentrations of vitamin B12, even in vitamin-enriched dairy products, at the level of tenths and hundredths of a milligram, make the assessment of its quantitative content a difficult analytical task. The use of reversed-phase liquid chromatography for this purpose, followed by detection by means of a spectrophotometric or diode-array detector, is associated with a time-consuming sample preparation technique. Including repeated concentration of the sample to achieve the required concentrations of the desired substance. In this connection, the development of an analytical method that allows to remove the disadvantages described above, is an urgent task.Methods. This article proposes a method for assessing the content of vitamin B12 by high performance liquid chromatography using a mass-spectrometric detector (HPLCMS). The method developed in this study can be used for laboratory analysis of vitamin B12 in dry formulas for baby food, which will provide the possibility of faster and more efficient results for the control and monitoring of baby food enriched with vitamin complexes of water-soluble vitamins of group B.Results. A method of sample preparation is presented, in which the recovery coefficient of the analyte in the studied samples was 99.12–99.31%. When evaluating the calibration curve, the correlation coefficient was r2 = 99.999. The calculated limit of detection is 0.02 g/kg.