LAUSR

BACKGROUND The increasing popularity of dietary supplements and consequently, food adulteration emphasizes the rising need to examine its association with fraud. Intentional or unintentional fraud in food supplements by hazardous chemicals compounds is a problem that many countries are struggling with. Many efforts have been made to effectively and reliably control the quality of the food supplements. OBJECTIVE Due to the importance of the subject, an analytical method for the simultaneous and reliable detection and quantitative determination of three key adulterants in dietary food supplements was developed. The proposed method benefits from analytical methods and multivariate calibration methods to progress the determination of adulterants in a complex matrix. METHOD High-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) assisted by multivariate curve resolution-alternating least square (MCR-ALS) analysis was used to detect adulterants in real samples after separation and preconcentration using novel mesoporous carbon nanoparticles. Solid phase extraction (SPE) optimization was accomplished by central composite design (CCD). In order to obtain the best results, the MCR-ALS model was compared with the parallel factor analysis 2 (PARAFAC2) model and validated by estimation of linearity, detection limits, and recovery. RESULTS The detection limits and linear dynamics were calculated as 1.5, 4.27, 4.77 µg/ml and 1 - 50, 5 - 20, 5 - 20 µg/ml for caffeine, ephedrine, and fluoxetine, respectively. Mean recovery for determination of caffeine, ephedrine, and fluoxetine using the developed method was reported 101.75, 91.7, and 92.36, respectively. CONCLUSION The results showed that to avoid negative health outcomes associated with the inconsiderate consumption of adulterated food supplements, releasing such products should be carefully regulated. The developed method was validated using statistical factors and shown acceptable and reliable results. HIGHLIGHTS 1. The application of MCR-ALS coupled with HPLC-DAD data sets allowed the simultaneous identification and quantification of three key adulterants (caffeine, ephedrine, and fluoxetine) in dietary food supplements.2. A small amount of the novel adsorbent was successfully used to preconcentrate the trace amounts of adulterants in samples.3. This method benefits the chemometrics tools and experimental design to significantly reduce the use of toxic solvents and complicated instruments to propose a less time-consuming method for quantification of multicomponent in the presence of uncalibrated interferents.