Determination of vitamin A and vitamin A acetate by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

A rapid and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic method with fluorescence detection has been devised for the analysis of vitamin A (retinol) and its acetate. The method employs a C18 reversed-phase column and methanol as an eluent. The detection of these two compounds is monitored with fluorescence excitation at 348 nm and emission at 470 nm. Detector noise established the lower limit of quantitation at approximately 0.5 ng. Plasma samples were employed to evaluate the accuracy, reproducibility, and applicability of the method. Less than 1 ng of vitamin A in plasma (as low as 1 microliter) can be quantitated by this procedure.