Analysis of proprietary Chinese medicines for the presence of toxic ingredients by LC/MS/MS

This paper presents an LC/MS/MS approach for simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analysis of proprietary Chinese medicine products for the presence of toxic ingredient compounds. The target compounds include three C(19)-diterpenoid alkaloids, two quinolizidine alkaloids, two indole alkaloids and four bufadienolide steroids. They were recognized as active compounds of several toxic/potent herbal materials commonly used in the preparation of some proprietary medicine products. These toxic/potent herbal materials include Radix Aconiti Lateralis, Radix Sophorae Tonkinensis, Semen Strychni and Venenum Bufonis. In the analysis, the LC/MS/MS system was set to record the MS spectra and respective multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) signals for different target compounds after they were separated and eluted from the column. The MS spectra were used for the qualitative analysis whereas the MRM signals for the quantitative analysis. In this study, totally 12 proprietary medicine products were tested and found to contain some of the target compounds at different levels.