High-performance liquid chromatographic method for isolating coprostanol from sediment extracts.
We report a rapid, largely automated high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method, which uses an HPLC column packed with alkylnitrile-substituted secondary alkylamine (aminocyano) bonded phase, to isolate coprostanol from interfering compounds in sediment extracts. Coprostanol is then quantitated, as the trimethylsilyl ether, by gas chromatography with flame ionization detection. Results from using the HPLC method to analyze a sediment reference material for coprostanol were statistically comparable to a previously used gravity-flow column method. We also report the coprostanol concentrations in several sediment samples from the California coast which reflect a range of sewage contamination (62-15,000 ng/g).