Determination of cholesterol, 7-dehydrocholesterol and cholecalciferol by HPLC with spectrophotometric and electrochemical detection

The aim of this thesis is to verify the possibility of simultaneous determination of three structurally related biologically active substances (cholesterol, 7-dehydrocholesterol and cholecalciferol) after previous separation by high-performance liquid chromatography followed by electrochemical (on a boron-doped diamond electrode) and spectrophotometric detection, which were compared in this work. The influence of the water content in the mobile phase (in the range of 0-10 %) on the retention factor of the analytes and their response for both types of detectors was investigated. Using all mentioted water contents, the analytes baseline-separated. As the water content increased, the retention factor of the analytes increased as well as the background current for higher positive detection potentials. Based on the recorded hydrodynamic voltammograms, the optimum detection potential + 1.8 V was chosen. The optimum wavelength for spectrophotometric detection was 200 nm. The concentration dependence was measured in an of 50 mmol l−1 sodium perchlorate in acetonitrile mixed with water (95:5, v/v). The spectrophotometric detector provided lower detection limits compared with the electrochemical detector, which had detection limits of 2.3 μmol l−1 for cholesterol, 1.4 μmol l−1 for 7-dehydrocholesterol and...