Vitamin E deficiencies are prevalent around the world and have become one of the major public health issues. It is necessary to determine their levels in human serum for routine clinical practice.

In this study, a simple and green ionic liquid-based (IL)vortex-assisted (VA) liquid–liquid microextraction (LLME) combined with HPLC was developed for simultaneous determination of eight vitamin E isomers in human serum.

The IL, 1-octyl-methylimidazolium trifluoromethanesulfonate ([OMIM]OTf), was added into the diluted sample and vortexed to form a cloudy solution. After centrifugation, the IL phase was collected for HPLC analysis. The separation was accomplished on a Phenomenex Luna-C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) and the column temperature was 30°C. The mobile phase was methanol/acetonitrile (80 + 20, v/v) and the flow rate was 0.7 mL/min. A fluorescence detector was used for the simultaneous detection of eight vitamin E isomers, and the detection wavelength was set at 290/327 nm. The LLME procedure can be completed within 10 min without using any organic solvent. The parameters affecting the extraction efficiencies were optimized, including the type and volume of the ILs, dispersive solvent, vortex time, and salt addition.

Under the optimal conditions, limits of detection were 0.857–4.16 ng/mL. Acceptable recoveries ranging from 80.1% to 103% were achieved, with relative standard deviations less than 13.0%. The proposed method was successfully applied to the detection of eight vitamin E isomers in human serum samples.

This method is simple, fast, environment-friendly, cheap, and has similar linear ranges, sensitivities, accuracy, and precision as those reported chromatographic methods.

The IL, [OMIM]OTf, was chosen as the green extractant of LLME for vitamin E extraction because of its strong adsorption property for vitamin E isomers. An IL-VA-LLME method has been developed for the analysis of 8 vitamin E isomers. The established method was successfully applied to the analysis of 8 vitamin E isomers in human serum samples.