Simultaneous determination of nutritional elements in human milk by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (623.4)

Several factors, such as dietary intake and genetic background, influence the elemental composition of human milk. Recently, a simultaneous method was developed to rapidly and accurately determine the concentrations of P, Na, K, Ca, Mg, Mn, Cu, Zn, Fe, Mo, Cr, and Se in human milk. The method involves an efficient sample digestion using nitric acid in a microwave digestion system equipped with single reaction chamber technology. After digestion, the samples were diluted to volume and quantified by ICP-MS. The method was validated by conducting experiments to determine precision, accuracy, linearity, limit of quantitation, and ruggedness. All external standard calibration curves had linearity correlation coefficients of 0.9999 or better and limits of quantitation as low as 0.2 ng/mL for several trace elements. A NIST Standard Reference Material 1849a - Infant/Adult Nutritional Formula was utilized as a daily check sample and analyzed in conjunction with the human milk samples to confirm data acceptability ...