title: Novel strategy for the determination of illegal adulterants in health foods and herbal medicines using high-performance liquid chromatography with high-resolution mass spectrometry.
abstract: The detection, confirmation, and quantification of multiple illegal adulterants in health foods and herbal medicines by using a single analytical method are a challenge. This paper reports on a new strategy to meet this challenge by employing high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry and a mass spectral tree similarity filter technique. This analytical method can rapidly collect high-resolution, high-accuracy, optionally multistage mass data for compounds in samples. After a preliminary screening by retention time and high-resolution mass spectral data, known illegal adulterants can be detected. The mass spectral tree similarity filter technique has been applied to rapidly confirm these adulterants and simultaneously discover unknown ones. By using full-scan mass spectra as stem and data-dependent subsequent stage mass spectra to form branches, mass spectrometry data from detected compounds are converted into mass spectral trees. The known or unknown illegal adulterants in the samples are confirmed or discovered based on the similarity between their mass spectral trees and those of the references in a library, and they are finally quantified against standard curves. This new strategy has been tested by using 50 samples, and the illegal adulterants were rapidly and effectively detected, confirmed and quantified.
authors: State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Substance and Function of Natural Medicines, Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, P. R. China.
authors: Zhe
authors: Z
authors: Wang
authors: Caisheng
authors: C
authors: Wu
authors: Gangli
authors: G
authors: Wang
authors: Qingsheng
authors: Q
authors: Zhang
authors: Jinlan
authors: J
authors: Zhang
mesh_terms: D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000032:analysis* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D055951:Functional Food / Q000032:analysis*; D029001:Herbal Medicine; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D010936:Plant Extracts / Q000032:analysis*; D010946:Plants, Medicinal / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D010936:Plant Extracts
keywords: Health foods; Herbal medicines; High-resolution mass spectrometry; Illegal adulterants; Mass spectral trees similarity filter