The contribution of polar sphingolipids to total sphingolipid content in food sources determined using a facile method for quantitation of long-chain bases.

Evidence indicates that dietary sphingolipids may influence health and disease, and increasingly are considered a functional food component. A facile method for quantifying total sphingolipid content in a wide variety of food samples would be valuable in nutrition research involving these lipid components. Such a method using basic HPLC instrumentation to quantify fluorescent derivatives of long-chain bases liberated from sphingolipids following direct hydrolysis of food samples is described. The results demonstrate that the sphingolipid content of plant-based foods obtained using direct hydrolysis is greater than that obtained using conventional extraction methods. Direct hydrolysis yields sphingolipid content for animal-based samples similar to more complicated conventional methods. With these advantages, direct hydrolysis is a valuable and broadly applicable method for quantifying the total sphingolipid content of both plant- and animal-based food samples.