Abstract
At present, dietary supplements are commercially available products,
globally consumed as an addition to the usual diet. Considering that dietary
supplements are a source of nutrients, they are widely utilized to improve human health
and prevent various diseases; therefore they are expected to be safe. There is still no
common definition regarding the role of supplements which cannot be considered
functional foods nor drugs. Dietary ingredients in supplements are exempt from food
additives or drugs regulations. For this reason, these supplements are marketed without
any data on identity, including ingredient information, effectiveness, toxicology and
safety. Therefore, efficacy and safety are necessary claims required to preserve
consumer health. To face this imperative challenge, sensitive and selective analytical
techniques capable of providing a full characterization of the supplements in terms of
their components are needed. In the last decades, Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) has
shown to be a powerful tool that offers solutions to almost any analytical issue arising
in several application fields. Due to its simplicity of operation and versatility, it has
become a complementary separation tool to other separation techniques such as gas and
liquid chromatography in the analysis of dietary supplements. This chapter aims to give
a comprehensive overview of the most important applications of CE for the analysis of
dietary supplements in terms of their main key components.
Keywords: Amino acid, Antioxidant, Capillary electrophoresis, Contaminant, Dietary supplement, Vitamin.
