Simultaneous determination of vitamins A and D3 in dairy products by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)

Abstract

A potential method for simultaneous determination of vitamin A and vitamin D3 (25- hydroxyvitamin D3) in fresh milk samples is addressed. The method is based on combination of high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry during the course of analysis. The method applied for determination of vitamins A and D3 on eighteen (18) different fresh milk samples using liquid chromatography along with tandem -mass spectrometry. The work describes the suitability of the proposed method for the simultaneous determination of both vitamins using LC-MS/MS as a specific and quantitative technique. The vitamins of milk were separated by C18 Thermo gold column(100mm × 4.6mm × 5 μm) with a flow rate of 1ml/min (using an isocratic mobile phase). The method was validated using duplicate analyses, relative recovery experiment, and comparative analysis with control samples. Liquid- liquid extraction was employed as a pre-concentration step with n-hexane - dichloromethane mixture (90%:10%) as an extraction solvent. The molecular ions (m/z) appeared near 286 and 385nm and for the base peaks were appeared near 255 and 355nm for vitamins A and D3. Good correlation coefficients were obtained, 0.9999 for vitamin D3 and 0.9994 for vitamin A. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification were found to be 0.09ng/ml and 0.54ng/ml for vitamin D3 and 0.32ng/ml and 1.8ng/ml and for vitamin A. The proposed method showed excellent recoveries, about 98% for both vitamins A and D3.