Sensitive determination of parabens in human urine and serum using methacrylate monoliths and reversed-phase capillary liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

A method for the determination of parabens in human urine and serum by capillary liquid chromatography (cLC) with UV-Vis and mass spectrometry (MS) detection using methacrylate ester-based monolithic columns has been developed. The influence of composition of polymerization mixture was studied. The optimum monolith was obtained with butyl methacrylate monomer at 60/40% (wt/wt) butyl methacrylate/ethylene dimethacrylate ratio and 50wt% porogens (composed of 36wt% of 1,4-butanediol, 54wt% 1-propanol and 10wt% water). Baseline resolution of analytes was achieved through a mobile phase of acetonitrile/water in gradient elution mode. Additionally, dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) was combined with both cLC-UV-Vis and cLC-MS to achieve the determination of parabens in human urine and serum samples with very low limits of detection. Satisfactory intra- and inter-day repeatabilities were obtained in UV-Vis and MS detection, although the latter provided lower detection limits (up to 300-fold) than the UV-Vis detection. Recoveries for the target analytes from spiked biological samples ranged from 95.2% to 106.7%. The proposed methodology for the ultra-low determination of parabens in human urine and serum samples is simple and fast, the consumption of reagents is very low, and very small samples can be analyzed.