High-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry for simultaneous determination of taurine and 10 water-soluble vitamins in multivitamin tablets

An HPLC/ESI-MS method for the simultaneous determination of taurine and 10 water-soluble vitamins including vitamin 131 (thiamine), 132 (riboflavin), 135 (pantothenic acid), 136 (pyridoxine, and pyridoxal), 138 (biotin), 139 (folic acid), C (ascorbic acid) and PP (nicotinamide and nicotinic acid) in multivitamin tablets was developed and validated. The separation was accomplished on a Johnson Spherigel C-18 (250 mm x 4.6 mm) reversed phase column with methanol in an aqueous solution of heptafluorobutyric acid (5 mM) as mobile phase under gradient elution mode. Detection of target components was by ESI-MS switching continuously from positive ion mode (PI) to negative ion mode (NI). Hippuric acid was used as an internal standard for quantification. Sensitivity, precision and accuracy were determined. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.