Ephedra Alkaloids in Functional Foods

This application brief highlights about analysis of ephedra alkaloids in functional food.

The compound analyzed in this study is ephedrine.

Sample Preparation

• Accurately weigh 1 gram of ephedra sample into a 100 mL volumetric flask, add 20 mL water and mix. Add 50 mL of MeOH and 1 ml of Internal Standard.

Use 0.5 g sample for ephedra extracts

Use 10 g sample weight for High Protein Powdered Drinks and other functional foods

• Sonicate for 1 hour at ambient temperature
• Cool and bring to volume with MeOH 
• Allow the suspended solids to settle, preferably certrifuge
• Filter a 3 mL aliqout through a 0.45 mm filter before a sample preperation 
• This step is critical to good SPE recovery
• For SPE, dilute 2 mL of filtered sample extract to 10 mL with 0.1% formic acid (aqueous) 

100% Level

1. norephedrine (NE) 0.24mg/g 
2. norpseudoephedrine (NPE) 0.40mg/g 
3. ephedrine (E) 20.0mg/g 
4. pseudoephedrine (PE) 5.0mg/g 
5. methylephedrine (ME) 0.70mg/g 
6. methylpseudoephedrine (MPE) 0.17mg/g