Determination of phenolic whitening agents in cosmetics by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography with amperometric detection

A sensitive method for simultaneous determination of six phenolic whitening agents, including arbutin, phenol, resorcinol, hydroquinone, kojic acid, and salicylic acid in cosmetics has been developed using micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography with amperometric detection （MECC-AD）. Effects of several factors, such as the pH value and concentration of running buffer, potential applied to the working electrode, separation voltage, and injection time were investigated to obtain optimum conditions for separation and detection. With a 75 cm long fused-silica capillary tube, well-defined separation of six phenolic compounds was achieved in 10 mmol/L SDS/40 mmol/L H3BO3-Na2B407 running buffer （pH 9.0）. Good linear relationship was obtained for each analyte over three orders of magnitude with correlation coefficients （r2） between 0.9985 and 0.9994, and the detection limit （S/N = 3） ranged from 0.04 p^g/mL to 0.45 p^g/mL. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of phenolic whitening agents in real cosmetic samples with satisfactory results, providing an alternative monitoring method for cosmetics safety regulation.

Capillary electrophoresis with laser-induced fluorescence detection of main polyamines and precursor amino acids in saliva

A hollow-fiber liquid-phase microextraction （HF-LPME） method has been developed for the purification and preconcentration of biogenic polyamines and their precursor amino acids in human saliva. Putrescine （Put）, cadaverine （Cad）, spermidine （Spe）, ornithine （Orn）, lysine （Lys）, and arginine （Arg） were determined by the CE-LIF detection after microextraction. Several factors that affect extraction efficiency, separation, and detection were investigated. Under the optimum conditions, six analytes could achieve baseline separation within 30 min, exhibiting a linear calibration at three orders of magnitude （r2 〉 0.998）; the obtained enrichment factors of HF-LPME were between 19 （for Orn） and 2] 8 （for Cad）, and the LODs were in the range of 0.0072-0.26 nmol/L. The proposed HF-LPME/CE-LIF method has been successfully applied for the sensitive analyses of the real-world saliva samples collected from healthy volunteers and different patients with oral diseases, providing a potential method for primary non-invasive diagnosis of some oral diseases.