Single-step preparation of selected biological fluids for the high performance liquid chromatographic analysis of fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants

Fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants are of relevance in health and disease. Current methods to extract these compounds from biological fluids mainly need use of multi-steps and multi organic solvents. They are time-consuming and difficult to apply to treat simultaneously large sample number. We here describe a single-step, one solvent extraction of fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants from biological fluids, and the chromatographic separation of all-trans-retinoic acid, 25-hydroxycholecalciferol, all-trans-retinol, astaxanthin, lutein, zeaxanthin, trans-β-apo-8′-carotenal, γ-tocopherol, β-cryptoxanthin, α-tocopherol, phylloquinone, lycopene, α-carotene, β-carotene and coenzyme Q10. Extraction is obtained by adding one volume of biological fluid to two acetonitrile volumes, vortexing for 60 s and incubating for 60 min at 37 °C under agitation. HPLC separation occurs in 30 min using Hypersil C18, 100 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm particle size column, gradient from 70% methanol + 30% H2O to 100% acetonitrile, flow rate of 1.0 ml/min and 37 °C column temperature. Compounds are revealed using highly sensitive UV-VIS diode array detector. The HPLC method suitability was assessed in terms of sensitivity, reproducibility and recovery. Using the present extraction and chromatographic conditions we obtained values of the fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants in serum from 50 healthy controls similar to those found in literature. Additionally, the profile of these compounds was also measured in seminal plasma from 20 healthy fertile donors. Results indicate that this simple, rapid and low cost sample processing is suitable to extract fat-soluble vitamins and antioxidants from biological fluids and can be applied in clinical and nutritional studies.