[Simultaneous determination of seven sexual hormones in cosmetics by reversed-phase high performance liquid...

An efficient method for analyzing seven sexual hormones in cosmetics, namely, estriol, estradiol-17beta, estrone, testosterone, methyl-testosterone, progesterone and diethylstilbestrol by reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography was developed. Samples were saponified with 20 g/L sodium hydroxide. The sexual hormones were then extracted with dichloromethane-acetic acetate (40:1, v/v) under acidic conditions (pH 3, adjusted with 1 mol/L HCl). An XTerra RP18 column was employed and a mixture of water-methanol-acetonitrile (50:32:18, v/v) was used as mobile phase. The seven sexual hormones were detected at 230 nm. The average spiked recoveries for the seven sexual hormones ranged from 75.6% to 97.8% with relative standard deviations of 1.9% to 7.2%. The linear ranges of determination were from 5 to 50 mg/L with correlation coefficients of 0.9999, and the limits of detection were from 3.7 to 12 ng. The method is suitable to simultaneously assay the seven sexual hormones in cosmetics with simplicity and accuracy in a single injection.