Analysis of Plant Sterol and Stanol Esters in Cholesterol-Lowering Spreads and Beverages Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography−Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization−Mass Spectroscopy

Abstract

Plant sterol and stanol esters were separated on a Luna hexyl-phenyl column using a gradient of acetonitrile (90-100%) in water. The eluted compounds were detected by atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI)-mass spectroscopy (MS) in the positive mode. Sterol and stanol esters produced [M + H - HOOCR](+) ions. Application of the hyphenated technique-LC-MS-allowed differentiation between a number of esters of sitosterol, campesterol, stigmasterol, and (tentatively) avenasterol, as well as sitostanol and campestanol esters. With cholesteryl decanoate used as the internal standard, the method showed good linearity, precision, and reproducibility. The method required minimal sample pretreatment and can be applied to samples with high water content (juices) as well as samples with high oil content (margarine spreads). The method could be useful for the analysis of sterol and stanol esters in fortified food products.

Sterol stability in functional fruit beverages enriched with different plant sterol sources

“…In two studies with orange juices, samples enriched with esterified PS (Mezine et al, 2003) (PS origin not specified) and PS from vegetable oils (Devaraj, Jialal, & Vega-López, 2004), a PS profile in which the predominant representative was β-sitosterol (40-50%) in a proportion lower than that found in our study (see Table 2) was reported. The percentage ranges in turn obtained for stigmasterol and campesterol were 20-23% and 25-27%, respectively, which were far higher than the levels recorded in our samples.…”

“…Plant sterol content has been determined in several milk beverages enriched with free or esterified PS (Laakso, 2005;Menéndez-Carreño et al, 2008;Saraiva, Castilho, Martins, Noronha da Silveira, & Ramos, 2011;Soupas et al, 2006), and in orange juices fortified with sterol esters (Mezine, Zhang, Macku, & Lijana, 2003) and with a sterol concentrate (Clement, Hansen, Costin, & Perri, 2010). However, few studies to date have identified and quantified POPs in other foods, and the existing publications mostly focus on high lipid content matrixes (Bortolomeazzi, Cordano, Pizzale, & Conte, 2003;Dutta, 2002;Soupas, Huikko, Lampi, & Piironen, 2007).…”

Vitamin D in plants: a review of occurrence, analysis, and biosynthesis

“…SRM increases selectivity, but more than one transition is needed for reliable confirmation, which preferable is combined with other evidence such as relative intensities of product ions in the mass spectra, accurate mass, retention time and peak shape to positively identify the compound as vitamin D (Jäpelt et al, 2011b). LC-MS and LC-MS/MS have also been used several times for analysis of sterols in plant matrices (Mezine et al, 2003; Rozenberg et al, 2003; Ruibal-Mendieta et al, 2004; Cañabate-Díaz et al, 2007; Lu et al, 2007; Jäpelt et al, 2011b). To study vitamin D and its sterol precursors in plants LC-MS/MS is the method of choice.…”

Capillary gas chromatographic analysis of complex phytosteryl/-stanyl ester mixtures in enriched skimmed milk-drinking yoghurts

“…In this way, information regarding the fatty acid composition of the steryl esters is lost. Approaches for the analysis of intact esters have also been reported (Barnsteiner, Lubinus, di Gianvito, Schmid, & Engel, 2011;Caboni, Iafelice, Pelillo, & Marconi, 2005;Gordon & Griffith, 1991;Gunawan, Melwita, & Ju, 2010;Kamm et al, 2001;Mezine, Zhang, Macku, & Lijana, 2003).…”