Determination of 21 illegally added chemical drugs in health foods using ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry coupled with QuEChERS

Abstract

A method for the simultaneous determination of 21 illegally added chemical drugs in improving sleep and immunity health foods using ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was developed. Oral liquid and health wine samples were shaken with acetonitrile and acetonitrile-water-formic acid (60:39:1, v/v/v), respectively, then purified by QuEChERS method. The extracts were separated on an Acquity UPLCTM BEH C18 column (50 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) with gradient elution of acetonitrile and 2 mmol/L ammonium acetate solution containing 0.1% (v/v) formic acid as mobile phases. The electrospray ionization in positive ion mode was used for analysis in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The results showed that the target drugs had a good linear relationship in the range of 1-100 μg/L with the correlation coefficients (R2) ≥ 0.992. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) were 0.07-3.41 μg/kg and 0.22-11.36 μg/kg, respectively. The average recoveries of the 21 chemical drugs in oral liquid and health wine were in the range of 61.4%-116.5% and 67.4%-98.4% with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.2%-13.4% and 0.2%-11.8%, respectively. The developed method is sensitive and reliable. It has been successfully used for the detection of illegally added chemical drugs in real samples.