Determination of trans-fatty acids in food samples based on the precolumn fluorescence derivatization by high performance liquid chromatography

Trans -fatty acids are unsaturated fatty acids that are considered to have health risks. 1,3,5,7-Tetramethyl-8-butyrethylenediamine-difluoroboradiaza- s -indacene is a highly sensitive fluorescent labeling reagent for carboxylic acids developed by our lab. In this study, using this precolumn fluorescent derivatization reagent, a rapid and accurate high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection method was developed for the determination of two trans-fatty acids in food samples. Under the optimized derivative conditions, two trans-fatty acids were tagged with the fluorescent labeling reagent in the presence of 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethyl-aminopropyl) carbodiimide at 25°C for 30 min. Then, the baseline separation of trans - and cis -fatty acids and their saturated fatty acid with similar structures was achieved with less interference using a reversed-phased C 18 column with isocratic elution in 14 min. With fluorescence detection at λ ex /λ em = 490 /510 nm, the linear range of the TFAs was 1.0-200 nM with low detection limits in the range of 0.1–0.2 nM (signal-to-noise ratio = 3). In addition, the proposed approach was successfully applied for the detection of trans-fatty acids in food samples, and the recoveries using this method ranged from 96.02 to 109.22% with low relative standard deviations of 1.2–4.3% ( n = 6).