Qualitative and quantitative determination of COPs in Cypriot meat samples using HPLC determination of the most effective sample preparation procedure.

This research work describes the development of a fast high-performance liquid chromatography method for the simultaneous determination of five important cholesterol oxidation products (COPs). The influence of various experimental parameters, such as the composition of the mobile phase, the flow rate and the column temperature, were investigated. Baseline separation was achieved by using acetonitrile-methanol-water-isopropanol (67:27:5:1) as a mobile phase with a 10°C column temperature. The developed method demonstrated good linearity and high reproducibility, with relative standard deviation values below 1.26% for all the COPs that were examined. The method was then applied, for the first time, to Cypriot smoked-meat products (lountza and hiromeri). The presence of COPs in these products suggests that the preparation of the meat products, and particularly the smoking process, possibly favors the oxidation of cholesterol. Finally, three different sample preparation procedures were evaluated and the optimum procedure was determined based on recovery, precision and simplicity.