The standardization and quality control of plant extracts is an important topic, in particular, when such extracts are used for medicinal purposes. Consequently, the development of fast and effective analytical methods for metabolomic fingerprinting of plant extracts is of high interest. In this investigation, electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and (1)H NMR techniques were employed with further statistical analyses of the acquired data. The results showed that negative ion mode ESI-MS is particularly effective for characterization of plant extracts. Different samples of the same species appear well-clustered and separated from the other species. To verify the effectiveness of the method, two other batches of extracts from a species, in which the principal components were already identified (Cynara scolymus), were analyzed, and the components that were verified by the principal component analysis (PCA) were found to be within the region identified as characteristic of Cynara Scolymus extracts. The data from extracts of the other species were well separated from those pertaining to the species previously characterized. Only the case of a species that was strictly correlated from a botanical point of view, with extracts that were previously analyzed, showed overlapping.

Immature bitter orange fruit and its extracts have been introduced into the market as an alternative to Ephedra in weight loss products. However, the safety of the immature bitter orange fruit and its extracts is a debated argument due to the presence of synephrine, a constituent known as a sympathomimetic agent. In this paper, we describe the development of a new, rapid, and simple liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry method devoted to the quantitative determination of synephrine in bitter orange samples, containing a high quantity of synephrine, and sweet orange samples, known to contain a low level of synephrine but at the same time being one of the main synephrine sources in a normal human diet. Two bitter orange dry extracts containing 5 and 6% sSynephrine and 10 sweet orange samples have been analyzed. Between the sweet orange samples, six were fresh oranges and four were fresh-squeezed juices; in these samples, the synephrine levels ranged from 0.00128 to 0.00349%.

Botanical extracts are standardized to 1 marker compounds (MCs). This standardization provides a certain level of quality control, but not complete quality assurance. Thus, industries are looking for other satisfactory systems to improve standardization. This study focuses on the standardization of herbal medicines by combining 2 parameters: the concentration of the MC and antioxidant capacity. Antioxidant capacity was determined with the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC) method and the concentrations of the MCs, by high-performance liquid chromatography. Total phenols were also determined by the Folin-Ciocolteau method. The ORAC values, expressed as mol Trolox equivalents/100 g (ORAC ), of 12 commercial herbal extracts were related to the ORAC values of the respective pure MCs at the concentrations at which the MCs occur in products (ORAC-MC ). The ORAC values of 11 extracts were higher than those of the respective MCs and the ratios ORAC-MC /ORAC ranged from 0.007 to 0.7, whereas in the case of Olea europaea leaves, the same ratio was 1.36. The ORAC parameters and their ratios, as well as the linear relationship between ORAC-MC and ORAC , are described and discussed as tools for improving the standardization of herbal products and detecting modifications due to herb processing and storage.

Phytopharmaceuticals, phytomedicines and botanical dietary supplements are products of wide interest considering the increase of their use. The development of fast and effective analytical methods able to give a fingerprinting of the product, on the basis of the plant extracts declared to be contained in it, is surely of high interest. In a previous investigation electrospray mass spectrometry was proved to be effective for the characterization of plant extracts. The direct infusion of the samples and the analyses in both positive and negative ion mode lead to a clear differentiation of the different samples. To verify if the same approach can be effective also for mixtures of plant extracts, five different commercial dietary supplements [Sedivitax gocce (1), Finocarbo Plus opercoli (2), Sollievo Bio tavolette (3), MiniMas opercoli (4) and Ruscoven gocce (5), all products from Aboca S.p.A., Sansepolcro, Italy] were analyzed by ESI. In order to evaluate possible changes in the metabolic profile with respect to different years of production, ten different batches of the commercial dietary supplements were considered. The mass spectral data were evaluated by multivariate analysis and the obtained results suggest that the method allows a satisfactory and rapid characterization of complex mixtures of commercial dietary supplements