Validation of an Analytical Method Based on High-Performance Liquid Chromatography for the Determination of Retinol in Chicken Liver

Retinol is an unsaturated fat-soluble isoprenoid alcohol. It is essential for the normal functioning of cells, human growth, and development, and it is found in animal sources in the form of palmitate ester. Chicken liver is an excellent source of retinol and is widely used in the diet of people in developing countries to combat Vitamin A deficiency. Several methods for the quantification of retinol in chicken liver have been reported in the literature. Most of them use more than one solvent for the determination and quantification of this micronutrient. A new method was developed based on a reverse phase system and using isocratic elution in a C18 column (5 mm, 250 × 4.6 mm) coupled to a SPD-20A UV-VIS detector at a wavelength of 325 nm with a single mobile phase, methanol. The method is simple and inexpensive, allowing the rapid extraction, determination, and quantification of retinol in chicken liver samples, with an average retention time of 5.2 min at 23°C, yielding good linearity results (R2 = 0. 9999), standard stock and freeze–thaw process stabilities of 93.2% and 97.5%, respectively, precision with coefficients of variation below 15%, and recovery coefficients ranging between 93% and 101.2%.