Use of hollow fiber liquid phase microextraction and HPLC for extraction and determination of apigenin in human urine after consumption of Satureja sahendica Bornm.

The applicability of hollow fiber liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME) was evaluated for extraction and preconcentration of apigenin prior to its determination by HPLC. Different parameters affecting the HF-LPME recovery such as nature of organic solvent, pH of donor and acceptor phases, extraction time, stirring speed, salt addition were optimized. Under optimum conditions (1-octanol as organic solvent, pH of the donor phase = 3 and pH of acceptor phase = 11.5, extraction time of 75 min, stirring speed of 1000 rpm) limit of detection (LOD) of 0.1 ng/mL, linear range of 0.5–300 ng/mL and correlation of determination (R2) of 0.9956 were obtained. The relative intra and inter-day standard deviations (RSD%) based on five replicate measurement were 3.5% and 10.7% respectively. Enrichment factor of 315 and recovery 85% were achieved. Finally, the applicability of the proposed method was evaluated by extraction and determination of apigenin in urine sample after consumption of Satureja sahendica Bornm. which is a native medicinal plant from Iran. Concentration of apigenin in urine sample was found to be 6.20 ng/mL.

► A simple and sensitive method for determination of apigenin has been introduced.
► Hollow fiber liquid phase microextraction was used for extraction of apigenin.
► Trace amount of apigenin in biological sample was preconcentrated using this method.
► The HF-LPME method has excellent clean-up and high-preconcentration factor.