In recent years, bioactive dietary supplements have embodied health-promoting ingredients able to enhance human well-being. They contain, beyond the nutritional components, bioactive compounds with health benefits and their use is on the rise. Thus, the need for highly selective and sensitive determination and quantitation of such biologically important compounds as amino acids, organic acids, and sugars in various food items and environmental matrices to monitor their presence, compositions, and concentrations is crucial. In this study, a simple, rapid yet highly sensitive extraction-derivatization GC-MS analytical method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of amino acids in dietary supplements. The optimized method allowed the simultaneous extraction of 14 amino acids in one single step using MTBSTFA as a derivatization reagent and mineralization at 140 oC for 30 min. Alternate derivatization reagents such as BSTFA, TFAA, and PFBBr as well as mineralization conditions were minimally successful with detection of such amino acids. • A rapid GC–MS method was developed for amino acid analysis in food. • Method validated according to international guidelines. • Derivatization optimized for improved sensitivity and reproducibility. • Applied successfully to diverse food matrices. • Provides accurate data for nutritional quality assessment.
Adamyan et al. (Fri,) studied this question.