Objective  To develop a new method for rapid determination of phosphatidylserine in food for special medical purpose with micellar electrokinetic chromatography.

  Methods  The separation was carried out using an uncoated fused-silica capillary with 50 μm i.d. and 30.2 cm total length (effective length: 20 cm). The separation buffer consists of 15 mmol/L sodium tetraborate and 90 mmol/L sodium dodecyl sulfate. The separation voltage was 15 kV and the detection wavelength was 214 nm. Samples were extracted with separation buffer and then centrifuged. Quantification was made with external calibration between the corrected peak area and the concentration of phosphatidylserine.

  Results  The limit of detection (signal/noisy S/N = 3) and limit of quantitation (S/N = 9) were 10 mg/L and 30 mg/L, respectively. The linear range between the corrected peak area and the concentration was from 30 mg/L to 390 mg/L with a correlation coefficient of 0.999 5. The average spiked recoveries of five replicates at three levels (30, 90 and 150 mg/L) were 106.5%, 114.1% and 105.2% with relative standard deviations of 2.041%, 0.4% and 0.7%, respectively. The intra-day precision of the method was 0.95%.

  Conclusion  The sample pre-treatment is simple and rapid without the usage of organic reagent. The analysis could be completed within 12 minutes (6 minutes for rinsing and 6 minutes for separation). The established method is suitable for accurate assay of phosphatidylserine in food for special medical purpose and is also suitable for the analysis of phosphatidylserine in clinical nutrition preparation samples, health products and raw materials.