Simultaneous Determination of Seven Adulterants in Slimming Functional Foods by HPLC–ESI–MS/MS

Assessment of Undeclared Synthetic Drugs in Dietary Supplements in an Analytical View: A Comprehensive Review

Dietary supplements have gained widespread attention globally as they are supposed to be healthier than synthetic pharmaceutical compounds with fewer side effects. Unlike common prescription drugs, dietary supplements are readily available to the general public. However, over the past few years, all kinds of legal and illegal drugs, have been detected in dietary supplements without labeling to defraud consumers, resulting in serious public health consequences. Due to the increasing number of drug frauds in dietary supplements, their consumption will undoubtedly risk consumers. Therefore; the importance of high-tech analytical methods in their assessment for controlling food quality seems undeniable. The current review examines the analytical techniques that focus on adulterating health products with undeclared pharmaceuticals, including registered and banned drugs. The present study referred to a survey from 2004 to 2021 based on articles in the Scopus database.

Validation of a rapid and simple high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry method for simultaneous analysis of 15 key chemicals in slimming foods and herbal products

A rapid and simple high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for simultaneous analysis of 15 key chemicals in slimming foods and herbal products. These chemicals were strictly restricted adulterants (phenolphthalein, sibutramine, fenfluramine, clopamide, ephedrine, norpseudoephedrine, caffeine and phenformin) and physiologically relevant active components (l-carnitine, nuciferine, aloe-emodin, rhein, emodin, chrysophanol and physcion). In multi-day validations, intra- (n = 5) and inter-day precision (n = 3), limits of detection and limits of quantification for all analytes were 0.60-7.22%, 0.75-9.45%, 0.09-10 μg/L and 0.30-33.3 μg/L, respectively. Mean recovery ranged from 71.4% to 116% for all analytes in three representative samples. The method was validated on 17 samples including 12 kinds of slimming foods and five kinds of herbal products, and was shown to be ideal for routine quantification of 15 key chemicals in slimming foods and herbal products, providing an efficient strategy for quality control and food safety evaluation of weight reducing supplements.

Rapid on-site detection of ephedrine and its analogues used as adulterants in slimming dietary supplements by TLC-SERS

Ephedrine and its analogues are in the list of prohibited substance in adulteration to botanical dietary supplements (BDS) for their uncontrollable stimulating side effects. However, they were always adulterated illegally in BDS to promote losing weight. In order to avoid detection, various kinds of ephedrine analogues were added rather than ephedrine itself. This has brought about great difficulties in authentication of BDS. In this study, we put forward for the first time a method which combined thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to directly identify trace adulterant. Ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, methylephedrine, and norephedrine were mixed and used in this method to develop an analytical model. As a result, the four analogues were separated efficiently in TLC analysis, and trace-components and low-background SERS detection was realized. The limit of detection (LOD) of the four analogues was 0.01 mg/mL. Eight common Raman peaks (△υ = 620, 1003, 1030, 1159, 1181, 1205, 1454, 1603 cm(-1)) were extracted experimentally and statistically to characterize the common feature of ephedrine analogues. A TLC-SERS method coupled with common-peak model was adopted to examine nine practical samples, two of which were found to be adulterated with ephedrine analogues. Identification results were then confirmed by UPLC-QTOF/MS analysis. The proposed method was simple, rapid, and accurate and can also be employed to trace adulterant identification even when there are no available reference derivatives on-site or unknown types of ephedrine analogues are adulterated.

Simultaneous identification of hydroxythiohomosildenafil, aminotadalafil, thiosildenafil, dimethylsildenafil, and thiodimethylsildenafil in dietary supplements using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

We developed a method for the separation and identification of illegal adulterants (hydroxythiohomosildenafil, aminotadalafil, thiosildenafil, dimethylsildenafil, and thiodimethylsildenafil) from dietary supplements using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The separation was achieved on a C18 column: the mobile phase consisted of 5 mM ammonium formate (pH 6.3)-acetonitrile (75 : 25, v/v) and acetonitrile, with gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The proposed method could also be used to separate vardenafil, homosildenafil, and dimethylsildenafil, all of which have the same molecular weight. Furthermore, the proposed method could simultaneously separate hydroxythiohomosildenafil, aminotadalafil, thiosildenafil, dimethylsildenafil, thiodimethylsildenafil, vardenafil, and homosildenafil. Thus, this method may be useful to identify medicinal ingredients for erectile dysfunction and their analogs and to control the quality of dietary supplements.