High performance liquid chromatographic separation of cholesterol oxidation products

A fast, sensitive, high performance liquid chromatographic method for the simultaneous determination of cholesterol hydroperoxides and other major oxysterols, using two different detection systems (ultraviolet at 210 nm and light scattering), is here described. The hydroperoxy derivatives were obtained by cholesterol photoxidation, isolated by thin layer chromatography and joined with a standard mixture of 10 oxysterols (epoxy, hydroxy and keto derivatives). Aliquots were directly injected onto a 5-μm particle size, 25×0.46 cm i.d. Spherisorb S5 CN normal phase column, usingn-hexane/anhydrous ethanol (97:3, v/v) as mobile phase and a flow rate of 0.8 mL min−1. This method allowed, in a single isocratic analysis, the separation and quantification of the primary and secondary cholesterol oxidation products in 30 minutes. The light scattering detector was particularly useful for the determination of nonderivatized 5,6-epoxides and cholestane-3β,5α,6β-triol. The sensitivity of both detectors was very similar for most of the oxysterols, except for the 5,6-epoxides and the 7-ketocholesterol. The method suitability for the determination of cholesterol oxidation products in food matrices was successfully tested on a saponified lipid extract from egg yolk powder.