Determination of Panthenol, Cholecalciferol and Tocopherol in Cosmetic Products by Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry in SIM Mode.

A novel simple method to detect vitamins in cosmetic products by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has been developed. Three vitamins (panthenol, cholecalciferol and tocopherol) were used for this study. Vitamins were prepared by dissolving in tetrahydrofuran (ThF), and silylated with bis-trimethylsilyltri-fluoroacetamide- trichloromethylsilane (BSTFA). Silylated vitamins were separated on a fused-silica capillary column coated with DB-5. The identification of each vitamin was accomplished by retention time and mass spectrum library search with a computer, and the quantitation was made in the selected-ion monitoring (SIM) mode of GC-MS. SIM mode had given sensitivity to determine 50 pg of panthenol, 285 pg of cholecalciferol and 130 pg of tocopherol. Linearity was maintained over the range 0.005-0.20% for each vitamin. Each cosmetic product (i.e. hair tonic and lotion) was found to contain amounts of the vitamins. This method was sensitive and gave 77.5-99.9% recovery of each vitamin from these cosmetic products. From these results, we concluded that silylation with BSTFA followed by GC-MS analysis allows the simple, convenient and exact determination of panthenol, cholecalciferol and tocopherol.