ABSTRACT
Of all chromatographic techniques, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) seems to be the most commonly used for the separation of lignans today, at least judging by the number of publications in international scientic journals. The introduction of advanced hyphenated techniques such as liquid chromatography (LC)–electrospray ionization (ESI)–mass spectrometry (MS), enabling quantication of lignans at low levels in complex matrices in a rapid and reliable way, has caused a rapid growth during the last 5-10 years of lignan analysis by LC-based techniques. Appropriate analytical techniques are required for lignans because of their large signicance, with potential applications in medicine and nutrition. This chapter focuses on sample-preparation procedures and on different methods for lignan analysis by LC techniques. Because of the limited length of this chapter, only a selected part of the huge number of studies on lignans overall, and HPLC lignan analysis particularly, is presented here.
