A Study on Detection of Drugs in Slimming Health Foods Using GC-MS/MS

Abstract

The determination of five drugs, fenfluramine (FEN), N-nitrosofenfluramine (NFE), sibutramine (SIB), mazindol (MAZ) and phenolphthalein (PHP), was studied in slimming health foods using GC-MS/MS. These drugs have been detected at high rates, especially in slimming health foods. Prolonged or excessive consumption of non-approved or unauthorized pharmaceuticals may cause serious adverse health consequences. In this study, samples were extracted with methanol and ultrasonication. Analyses were performed by GC-MS/MS, using established MS/ MS parameters in the electron ionization (EI) mode and chemical ionization (CI) mode. In the EI mode, the recoveries of five drugs from several types of slimming health foods such as tablets, capsules and tea-bags spiked at 1 ῌg/mg (except PHP, spiked at 4 ῌg/mg) were in the range of 85.0῍110.7 and 100 ῌg/mg (except PHP, spiked at 200 ῌg/mg) were 94.9῍102.9, respectively. In the CI mode, good recoveries of 80.3῍102.2 (spiked at low concentration) and 92.8῍103.2 (spiked at high concentration) were also obtained. We evaluated the present method using four slimming health foods, in which drugs had previously been detected. The results were similar to the previous results. These findings indicate that the present procedure for evaluating five drugs in slimming health foods by means of GC-MS/MS is useful.

Simultaneous determination of pharmaceutical components in dietary supplements for weight loss by capillary electrophoresis tandem mass spectrometry

“…The average LOD values ranged from 1.0 μg/g to 750 μg/g (equivalent to 0.004-3.0 μg/ ml as concentration of injected solution), which were low enough to detect the pharmaceutical components in view of the prescribed dosage. As expected, compared with the previous GC-MS and LC-MS methods, [6,8] the high LOD values were observed as a consequence of the small sample volume in the CE analysis. Figure 4 shows the electropherogram of the spiked sample.…”

“…[6,8] However, Date et al [8] found that the extraction with methanol gives poor recovery for sennoside A and sennoside B (both below 50 %). Some studies have reported that methanol was used as an extraction solvent in drug analysis for the dietary supplement.…”

“…Some studies have reported that methanol was used as an extraction solvent in drug analysis for the dietary supplement. [6,8] However, Date et al [8] found that the extraction with methanol gives poor recovery for sennoside A and sennoside B (both below 50 %). Meanwhile, the Japanese Pharmacopoeia specifies the extraction with 70 % v/v methanol as the determination of these compounds in Senna Leaf.…”

“…[6][7][8][9][10] LC-MS has grown rapidly in popularity for the simultaneous determination of their drugs. These include gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) methods with mass spectrometry (MS) detector.…”

“…These include gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) methods with mass spectrometry (MS) detector. [6][7][8][9][10] LC-MS has grown rapidly in popularity for the simultaneous determination of their drugs. The major advantage of LC-MS is that it requires no derivatization steps and offers high throughput capability.…”