Screening and quantification of 18 glucocorticoid adulterants from herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods by HPLC and confirmed by LC-Q-TOF-MS/MS

Abstract

A procedure for the screening and quantification of 18 glucocorticoids, i.e. hydrocortisone sodium succinate (HSS), prednisolone (PDL), prednisone (PDS), hydrocortisone (HCS), methylprednisolone (MPS), betamethasone (BTM), dexamethasone (DXM), triamcinolone acetonide (TA), prednisolone acetate (PLA), hydrocortisone acetate (HA), fludrocortisone acetate (FA), prednisone acetate (PA), cortisone acetate (CA), dexamethasone acetate (DA), hydrocortisone butyrate (HB), triamcinolone acetonide acetate (TAA), fluocinonide (FN) and halcinonide (HC) from herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods was established and fully validated. The samples were extracted by methanol and separated by HPLC. The retention times and ultraviolet spectra were used for the preliminary screening, and the suspected adulterants were then confirmed by liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS/MS) and quantified by HPLC. The developed procedure was successfully applied to 14 herbal samples, and 316.3 µg g of DA and 13.6 µg mL of BTM were found in a tablet sample and a spray sample, respectively. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of the simultaneous screening and quantification of these 18 glucocorticoids from any matrix.

Fast Screening and Identification of Illegal Adulterated Glucocorticoids in Dietary Supplements and Herbal Products Using UHPLC-QTOF-MS With All-Ion Fragmentation Acquisition Combined With Characteristic Fragment Ion List Classification

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Ultraviolet-coupled advanced oxidation processes for anti-COVID-19 drugs treatment: Degradation mechanisms, transformation products and toxicity evolution

“…The concentrations of the three anti-COVID-19 drugs were detected in positive ionization mode using the Shimadzu LC20ADXR HPLC system (Shimadzu, Japan) linked to an AB Sciex QTrap 5500 hybrid linear ion-trap triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (AB SCIEX, USA). The analysis method was optimized from the references ( Dongre et al, 2009 ; Jin et al, 2017 ; Dadinaboyina et al, 2021 ). The software of Analyst 1.5.2. was used to acquire data.…”

Recent advances in the bioanalytical methods of polyethylene glycols and PEGylated pharmaceuticals

“…In order to address the low fragmentation efficiency of in‐source CID, the high collision energy characteristic of MS ALL technique was applied to LC–Q‐TOF‐MS. LC–Q‐TOF‐MS is a hybrid MS technology consisted of a unit mass resolution quadrupole (Q1), a second quadrupole (Q2), and a TOF mass analyzer with high resolution [211–218]. In the acquisition procedure of MS ALL technique, all the precursor ions are allowed to go through Q1 freely and fragmented in Q2.…”