Simultaneous determination of four water-soluble vitamins in fortified infant foods by ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

J Chromatogr Sci. 2008 Mar;46(3):225-32. doi: 10.1093/chromsci/46.3.225.

Abstract

A novel ultra-performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous determination of four water-soluble vitamins, including vitamin B5 (VB5), vitamin B8 (VB8), vitamin B9 (VB9), and vitamin B12 (VB12) in fortified infant foods is developed and validated. A reverse phase UPLC separation system consisting of a Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C-18 column (2.1 mm x 100 mm i.d., 1.7 microm) and a binary gradient acetonitrile-water mobile phase is applied for the separation of the four water-soluble vitamins. Formic acid is spiked into the mobile phase to enhance the ionization efficiency. Tandem MS-MS analysis is performed in multi-reaction monitoring mode (MRM). Product-ion traces at m/z 220.1 --> 89.9 for VB5, 245.1 --> 227.1 for VB8, 442.3 --> 295.2 for VB9, and 678.9 --> 147.0 for VB12 are used for quantitation of the corresponding vitamins, and traces at m/z 455.5 --> 308.0 are used for methotrexate (internal standard). Limits of quantitation (LOQs) are 0.016, 0.090, 0.020, and 0.019 microg/L for VB5, VB8, VB9, and VB12, respectively. Intra- and inter-day precisions for the determination of the four vitamins are better than 6.84% and 12.26% in relative standard deviations, and recoveries for the four vitamins are in the range of 86.0~101.5%. The developed approach is applied for the determination of the trace amounts of the vitamins in fortified milk powers and fortified rice powers.

MeSH terms

  • Chromatography, Liquid / instrumentation
  • Chromatography, Liquid / methods*
  • Food, Fortified / analysis*
  • Infant Food / analysis*
  • Pantothenic Acid / analysis
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Tandem Mass Spectrometry / methods*
  • Vitamin B 12 / analysis
  • Vitamins / analysis*

Substances

  • Vitamins
  • Pantothenic Acid
  • Vitamin B 12