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 B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B5 (pantothenic acid), B6 (pyridoxine, and pyridoxal), B8 (biotin), B9 (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 C18 (250 mm × 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.