Screening and quantification of fourteen synthetic antidiabetic adulterants in herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods by HPLC and confirmation by LC-Q-TOF-MS/MS

ABSTRACT

A procedure was established and fully validated for the screening and quantification of fourteen synthetic antidiabetic adulterants in herbal pharmaceuticals and health foods, including metformin (MF), buformin (BF), phenformin (PHF), rosiglitazone (RGZ), pioglitazone (PGZ), chlorpropamide (CPM), glipizide (GPZ), tolbutamide (TBM), gliclazide (GCZ), glibenclamide (GBM), glimepiride (GMR), repaglinide (RGN), gliquidone (GQD) and nateglinide (NGN). The samples were extracted by methanol and separated by HPLC. 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 assess twenty-four herbal samples, and PHF, GCZ, GBM, MF, GPZ and BF were found in many. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of simultaneous screening and quantification of these fourteen synthetic antidiabetic adulterants from any matrix.

KEYWORDS:

• HPLC
• Q-TOF
• antidiabetic
• herbal pharmaceutical
• health food
• adulterant

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Funding

This work was supported by Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission Drug Specifications Research Project [CHP-LC-2019001] and Beijing Hospital Nova Project [BJ-2016-039].