Methods for Determination of Vitamin D by High Performance Liquid Chromatography: a Review

Scientific community's interest in the role of vitamin D in health has increased greatly in recent years. About 1 billion people around the world have deficiency or insufficiency of this vitamin. This statistic is worrying, as vitamin D is indispensable to human health. Accurate measurement of vitamin D is necessary to provide adequate recommendations for supplementation for at-risk groups and to monitor regulatory compliance. Since both under-dosing and overdosing of vitamin D can have adverse health effects, adequate control of the presence of this vitamin in both food and supplements is necessary. Determination of vitamin D in foods represents an enormous analytical challenge because the chemistry of this vitamin is complex and the methods are detailed and time-consuming. The objective of this work is to review the analytical methods for vitamin D determination in foods, using high-performance liquid chromatography as an analytical tool.