Simultaneous HPLC Determination of Caffeine, Theobromine, and Theophylline in Food, Drinks, and Herbal Products

Abstract

A rapid and selective high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method is developed for the separation and determination of caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline. The chromatography is performed on a Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C8 column (4.6x150 mm i.d., 5-microm particle size) at 25 degrees C, with a mobile phase of water-THF (0.1% THF in water, pH 8)-acetonitrile (90:10, v/v). The flow rate is 0.8 mL/min, and detection is by UV at 273 nm. This method permits the simultaneous determination of caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline in food, drinks, and herbal products with detection limits of 0.07-0.2 mg/L and recoveries of 100.20-100.42%. Correlation coefficients, for the calibration curves in the linear range of 0.2-100 mg/L, are greater than 0.9999 for all compounds. The within- and between-day precision is determined for both retention times and peak area. The data suggests that the proposed HPLC method can be used for routine quality control of food, drinks, and herbal products.

Correlation between caffeine contents of green coffee beans and altitudes of the coffee plants grown in southwest Ethiopia

“…Therefore, choosing the right analytical method is essential for the accurate determination of caffeine in test samples. There have been numerous reports on the determination of caffeine in coffee samples following different analytical methods: gas chromatography [15,17,18], electrochemical methods such as voltammetry [19], and spectroscopic techniques including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy [20], near infrared [21], high performance liquid chromatography [5,8,22,23], UV-Vis spectroscopy [4,7,24,25] and fluorescence spectroscopy [26]. However, there are only limited reports available on the comparative study of caffeine determination by different analytical methods for a given set of samples [5,23].…”

Caffeine Content of Retail Market Coffee in Portugal

“…Various studies on the determination of caffeine have already been published (Tzanavaras and Themelis 2007;McCusker et al 2003McCusker et al , 2006aBispo et al 2002;Evans and Siitonen 2008;Srdjenovic et al 2008;Desbrow et al 2007;Campa et al 2005;Food Standards Agency 2004;Rodrigues et al 2007). In terms of methodology, some refer to the determination of caffeine in different matrices using high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detector (HPLC-UV) (Bispo et al 2002;Evans and Siitonen 2008;Srdjenovic et al 2008).…”

Determination of Caffeine and Its Metabolites in Wastewater Treatment Plants Using Solid-Phase Extraction and Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry

“…These results indicated that the mass load profile of caffeine derivatives was 3.75 times the coffee consumption (caffeine of 3.97 g/day/1000 inhabitants), possibly due to consumption of other food and drink containing caffeine (i.e., chocolate products and tea). 47 Tea is also a popular drink in the Kyoto area. 48 In summary, total caffeine consumption was 11.39 g/day/1000 inhabitants in Kyoto based on a calculation of the consumption of caffeine-rich drink and food, which was 76% of estimated caffeine consumption by measuring the concentration of caffeine derivatives.…”