Determination of cyclamate in foods by high performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

A high sensitive method for determination of cyclamate in foods by ion-pair high-performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization mass spectrometry was developed and validated. The separation was achieved on a C8 column with 5 mM tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane aqueous solution (pH 4.5, adjusted by acetic acid) as mobile phase with an isocratic mode. The quantification of target compound was completed using a selected ion recording (SIR) at m/z 178 obtained from ESI-mode. Tiopronin was used as internal standard for the quantification of cyclamate. The correlation coefficient of the calibration curve were better than 0.996, in the range of 50–5000 ng/mL. The limit of detection is 5 ng/mL, the limit of quantification is 20 ng/mL. The inter- and intra-day accuracy, precision were investigated in detail. The method can be used to monitor effectively the content of the artificial sweetener in foods. The method has obvious merits such as high sensitivity, specificity and simply versus other methods reported.