Application of liquid chromatography‐high resolution mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography‐tandem mass spectrometry methods to 45 weight loss compounds in health functional food, food, and illegal drug

Abstract

In order to effectively and quickly monitor such illegal food and drugs, simultaneous screening and quantitative analysis for multiple compounds are needed. In this study, we established a method of identifying fragmentation ions of 45 compounds for weight loss using liquid chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry and developed a quantitation method through liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. Note that, 656 samples selected as health functional food, food, and illegal drug were applied. The detection rate of banned weight loss compounds in health functional food, food, and illegal drug was showed as 19.2, 27.3, 40.7%, respectively. Among them, sibutramine, sennoside A and B, ephedrine were most frequently detected in 237 samples that contained weight loss compounds. The detection range about sibutramine was 0.03-159.3 mg/g, sennoside was 0.1-97.6 mg/g, and ephedrine was 0.1-587.7 mg/g in the detected 237 samples. In addition, the unknown compounds not included in our simultaneous analysis method in some samples were identified as furosemide and chlorpheniramine. High selectivity of high resolution mass spectrometry combined with these fragmentation pathways and tandem mass spectrometry methods can be successfully applied to screening and identifying 45 weight loss compounds for continuous blocking and supervision of illegally distributed health functional food, food, and illegal drug.