Detection of vadenafil in health foods by high performance liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry

A high-performance liquid chromatography electrospray/mass spectrometry (HPLC-ES/MS) method was developed to detect vardenafil in health foods. The separation was completed on a RP-C_ 18 column with 0.2% formic acid aqueous solution-acetronitrile (65+35) as mobile phase. Elution was run at a flow rate of 1 ml/min and UV detection was performed at 254 nm. Good linearity between response (peak area) and concentration was shown in a concentration range of 3.6～450 μg/ml for vardenafil. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curves were better than 0.999 8 (n=6). The limit of quantitation (LOQ) was 18 ng and the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.9 ng(S/N=6).The method was sensitive, precise and highly reproducible.