Detecting aristolochic acids in herbal remedies by liquid chromatography/serial mass spectrometry

Abstract

Targeted liquid chromatography/serial mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) analysis, using a quadrupole ion-trap mass spectrometer, permitted the detection of aristolochic acids I and II in crude 70% methanol extracts of multi-component herbal remedies without any clean-up or concentration stages. The best ionisation characteristics were obtained using atmospheric pressure chemical ionisation (APCI) and by including ammonium ions in the mobile phase. Limits of detection for aristolochic acids were influenced by the level of interference created by other components in the sample matrix. They were determined to be between 250 pg and 2.5 ng on-column within a matrix containing compounds extracted from 2 mg of herbal remedy. With a herbal remedy that only permitted the higher limit of detection, this sensitivity was sufficient to detect the aristolochic acids extracted from 0.1% dry weight of Aristolochia manshuriensis included in the preparation.

A liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of aristolochic acid‐I in rat plasma

“…Aristolochic acid (AA) is a mixture of structurally related mitrophenanthrene carboxylic acid derivatives found primarily in the genus Aristolochia and Asarum (Kite et al, 2002;Chan et al, 2007). AA has long been used in traditional Chinese medicinal treatment for arthritis, rheumatism, gout and tumors.…”

Simultaneous determination of five aristolochic acids and two aristololactams in Aristolochia plants by high‐performance liquid chromatography

“…However, Guanmutong, Qingmuxiang and Guangfangji have been cancelled (State Food andDrug Administration, 2003, 2004) because the content of aristolochic acids in these three drugs is high enough to cause aristolochic acid nephropathy (AAN). AAN has been reported in some countries, including Belgium (Vanherweghem et al, 1993), England (Lord et al, 1999), Japan (Tanaka et al, 1997), and China (Liu and Zeng, 1994;Ma, 1998 Shang et al, 2000), thin layer chromatography scanning (TLCS; Chen et al, 1994;Cui et al, 2001), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC; Liu and Wang, 1990;Hashimoto et al, 1999;Ong et al, 2000;Schaneberg et al, 2002;Kawamura et al, 2003), liquid chromatography-electrospray mass spectrometry (LC/MS; Kite et al, 2002;Chan et al, 2003;Jong et al, 2003;Ioset et al, 2003), and capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE; Ong and Woo, 2001;Li et al, 2004b). However, most of these reports focused on the determination of AA-I or AA-I and AA-II, while no report on the determination of other AAs was found except that the contents of AA-I, AA-II, AA-III, AA-IIIa, AA-IVa, AA-VIIa and AA-E in leaves of Aristolochia debilis were given after HPLC analysis (Nishida and Fukami, 1989).…”

Analysis of aristolochic acids by CE‐MS with carboxymethyl chitosan‐coated capillary

“…Therefore, the 20 mM HAc-NH 4 Ac at pH 5.0 under À30 kV was chosen for CE-MS operation based on the CZE conditions mentioned above, and the current was about 26.5 mA, which was lower than the current limit of this instrument. Moreover, the positive mode in MS was selected according to the report in LC-MS condition [20]. It is well known that the sheath liquid always had great effect on ionization efficiency, signal stability, and electrical contact between CE and ESI.…”

“…During the past few years, many methods had been reported to determine AAs, such as TLC [6][7][8], HPLC with UV-Vis [1,[9][10][11][12][13][14], or MS detection [2,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20]. However, neither the selectivity nor sensitivity of TLC is satisfactory, and HPLC methods need more organic solvent and HPLC reported usually need more analytical time.…”