Briefly, milk proteins were precipitated with ethanol and tocopherols were extracted from human milk with hexane. The hexane extract was dried under nitrogen and the residue was reconstituted in a dichlo- romethane:methanol (2:1, v/v) solution. Tocol was used as the internal standard for quantification of the analytes. Tocopherols were separated by means of a reversed-phase chromatographic column with a mobile phase of acetonitrile:methanol (60:40, v/v) and detected with a fluorescence detector, using an excitation wavelength of 297 and an emission wavelength of 328 nm.