Determination of biotin following derivatization with 2-nitrophenylhydrazine by high-performance liquid chromatography with on-line UV detection and electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry

Currently, biotin is typically determined in Japan using a microbiological method. Such microbiological assays are sensitive, but they are not always highly specific and are also rather tedious and time-consuming. In the present study, RP-HPLC and LC–MS methods for the determination of biotin have been developed by derivatizing the carboxyl group with 2-nitrophenylhydrazine hydrochloride. 2-Nitrophenylhydrazine is used for the derivatization of carboxylic acids, and these derivatives are known to be applicable to LC–MS detection. Biotin in tablets were extracted by the addition of water and ultrasonic agitation. In order to clean up the sample solution, the filtrate was applied to an ODS cartridge and eluted with methanol. The conditions for preparing the 2-nitrophenylhydrazide derivatives were modified from a previous report for fatty acids. Good recovery rates of over 70% were obtained for the addition of 5–125 μg of biotin per formulation. The detection limit in HPLC at 400 nm was 0.6 ng per injection, with good linearity being obtained over the concentration range 0.001–0.2 μg per injection. Further, derivatives were determined by LC–MS with electrospray ionization, where the spectra indicated the molecular ions [M + H]+. The detection limit was 0.025 ng per injection in the selected ion monitoring analysis, and linearity was observed in the range of 0.6–6 ng per injection. The proposed method could be used to specifically determine the presence of biotin in relatively clean samples.