Sugaring-Out Assisted Liquid-Liquid Extraction Combined with High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Fluorescence Detection for the Determination of Bisphenol A and Bisphenol B in Royal Jelly

Abstract

An analytical method based on sugaring-out assisted liquid-liquid extraction (SULLE) and HPLC-fluorescence detection has been developed for the determination of bisphenol A (BPA) and bisphenol B (BPB) in royal jelly. Experimental parameters of SULLE including the extraction solvent, amount of phase separation agent, initial concentration of acetonitrile (ACN), and sample size were investigated. The optimal SULLE procedure involves 0.3 g sample extracted by 2 mL ACN-water mixture (50%, v/v), followed by phase separation with the addition of 0.4 g glucose. The obtained extract was injected into the reversed-phase HPLC system without clean-up step. The chromatography separation of BPA and BPB from royal jelly matrix was achieved in the mobile phase composed of 40% ACN and 60% water with isocratic elution at 1.0 mL/min. Limits of quantification for BPA and BPB were 40 μg/kg and 45 μg/kg, respectively, and limits of detection for BPA and BPB were 16 μg/kg and 18 μg/kg, respectively. Average recoveries of BPA and BPB at three spiked levels were in the range of 88.32~93.59% and 95.14~97.48%, respectively. Precision expressed as relative standard deviations (RSDs) in the interday and intraday analysis were all lower than 5%. The developed method was applied to the analysis of ten commercial and eight raw royal jelly samples. Results indicated that none of BPA and BPB were detected in these 18 samples. The proposed method is simple, fast, and sensitive, and could be used for the monitoring of BPA and BPB contamination in royal jelly.