Improved liquid-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for the determination of the bioactive dipeptides, carnosine and anserine: application to analysis in chicken broth.

An improved method, based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), has been developed to determine the bioactive dipeptides carnosine (CAR) and anserine (ANS) in chicken broth. These analytes are hydrophilic (polar) and in order to improve their retention, the chromatographic mode used was hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) (1.7 μm particle size). In order to remove the salt before the chromatographic analysis of the chicken broth (0.8%, w/w), an exhaustive sample pre-treatment strategy was necessary since the salt is not volatilized and could block the ionization source and lead to signal suppression. The chicken broth was firstly centrifuged to remove the fat and chicken proteins, and then was pretreated by off-line solid-phase extraction (SPE), using traditional cartridges, or off-line μElution plate (μSPE), using microplates, and the results were compared. Due to the high polar character of the dipeptides studied and the sample matrix, these compounds were not retained in the sorbent hydrophilic-lipophilic balanced (HLB) and were eluted in the load step, whereas the salt was retained in the sorbent. This fact was observed by the addition of silver nitrate in the chicken broth extract, where before the SPE or μSPE a white precipitate (silver chloride) was formed and after the SPE or μSPE this precipitate was not observed. By using these sample pre-treatment strategies, the extraction recoveries were higher than 80%, and the matrix effect was lower than 12%. Once the improved method was developed, the quality parameters of the method were studied. The LODs and LOQs of the CAR and ANS were lower than 6 and 1.8 μg/l, respectively. Then, the method was applied to analyse a commercial chicken broth. This improved method allowed determining CAR and ANS between 6 and 10mg dipeptide/l chicken broth in 10 min (sample pre-treatment and chromatographic analysis). Therefore, the proposed improved method is concluded to be rapid, sensitive and selective for the determination of polar compounds by MS in samples that contain salt.