Determination of Vitamin A in Infant/Adult Formula by HPLC-Isotope Dilution Mass Spectrometry

Abstract Vitamin A is an essential nutrient. Accurate determination of vitamin A in formulae or serum is a challenging problem, due to the labile properties of vitamin A and complexity of the matrices. For accurate and precise determination of vitamin A in formulae, a method of high performance liquid chromatography-isotope dilution mass spectrometry (HPLC-IDMS) was established with D4-retinyl palmitate as an internal standard. This method was validated by a standard reference material. Coefficient of variation of this method is 2.85%, which is less than that of other literatures for determination of vitamin A in complex matrices (5–10%). This method was applied to participate in an international intercomparison. The result indicated that this method is an accurate and precise method for determination of vitamin A in complex matrices especially in formulae.