Determination of thirteen sweeteners in gum-based chewing tobacco with UPLC-MS/MS method

To rapidly determine seven synthetic sweeteners (Acesulfame potassium, Sodium cyclamate, Saccharin sodium, Aspartame, Neotame, Sucralose and Stevioside) and six natural sweeteners (Erythritol, Xylitol, Mannitol, Sorbitol, Maltitol and Isomaltitol) in gum-based chewing tobacco, an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method was developed. Samples of gum-based chewing tobacco were extracted by shaking with n-hexane and water. The seven synthetic sweeteners were separated by reversed phase column using gradient methanol/water as mobile phase. The six natural sweeteners were separated by special sugar column using gradient acetonitrile/water solution as mobile phase. All the sweeteners were analyzed by UPLC-MS/MS under the negative ion monitoring mode. The results showed that:1) The linear correlation of the thirteen sweeteners were good (R²>0.994), the limits of detection and quantitation were 6.8×10^-6-0.30 and 2.3×10^-5-1.0 μg/kg, respectively; the linear ranges of all the sweeteners ranged from 0.001 to 1.0 μg/mL. 2) The recoveries of the sweeteners were from 80.2% to 97.6%. 3) The precisions of intra- and inter-day were all less than 10% (n=6). This method is suitable for the rapid qualitative and quantitative analysis of sweeteners in gum-based chewing tobacco.