[Determination of 4-nonylphenol and bisphenol A in rat serum by high performance liquid chromatography with...

This study was directed to the development of a simple and highly sensitive method for determination of 4-nonylphenol (4-NP) and bisphenol A (BPA) in rat serum using HPLC with fluorescence detector.

4-NP and BPA in serum samples were extracted by a mixed solvent of n-hexane and diethyl ether (70:30), the organic layer was dried with nitrogen flow and dissolved with mobile phase. The operating conditions such as C18 column (250 mm x 4.6 mm, 5 microns), acetonitrile-ammonium acetate buffer (pH 4.5) as mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 ml/min and fluorescence detector with the excitation and emission wavelength at 227 nm and 313 nm respectively were used for the determination.

There was good linear relationship between the concentrations of the analytes in rat serum and their peak areas in the ranges of 0.013-5.0 micrograms/ml for 4-NP and 0.004-3.0 micrograms/ml for BPA. The detection limit of the method was 13 ng/ml for 4-NP and 4 ng/ml for BPA. Recoveries of rat serum samples were 83.8%-100.0% for 4-NP and 83.3%-100.0% for BPA. The intra-day precision was 1.70%-2.70%, the inter-day precision was 2.06%-9.78%.

The results showed that the method is suitable for the determination of BPA and 4-NP in serum.