Last year I had an undergraduate student investigate the analysis of caffeine in hair samples. The aim was to determine if there was a correlation between the amount of caffeine in the hair sample and the amount of caffeine drunk by the individual.
The student produced a very good project with a fully validated method. The method analysed caffeine and three metabolites using HPLC with a UV detector. The student analysed twenty hair samples for caffeine and metabolites and plotted this versus the caffeine intake. There was a definite trend but with such a small data set it was not possible to draw further conclusions.
This year I have a student working up a method for the same topic but using an LC-MS method. Once this method is up and running we hope to analyse a much larger sample number allowing us to draw some conclusions. Watch this space for updates!
I reckon you could make a decent cappuccino using a sample of my hair 😉
Could you please e mail me the amount of hair taken per analysis ?
Hair analyses can be conducted on anywhere from 10mg to 100mg of hair.
Thanks
Tom