Simultaneous determination of retinol and its derivatives by high performance liquid chromatography

A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the determination of 16 components including retinol and its derivatives in cosmetics was established. The optimized conditions for the separation and detection of the 16 components were as follows: separated by a Kromasil 100-5-C18 column (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 µm), and gradient elution with methanol as mobile phase A, tetrahydrofuran as mobile phase B and 10 mmol/L sodium dihydrogen phosphate solution as mobile phase C, with a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min and the column temperature of 25 ℃. The analysis was completed using photo-diode array detector and quantified by standard curve method. The results showed that the linear correlation coefficients of the 16 components were greater than 0.999, the average recoveries were 91.2%-107.8%, and the relative standard deviations were 0.5%-4.0% at three spiked levels. This method can provide effective technical support for cosmetics quality supervision. © 2024, Youke Publishing Co.,Ltd. All rights reserved.