Simultaneous of illegal additives in dietary supplements and traditional medicines by high performance liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

A high performance liquid chromatographic method coupling with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC/ESI-MS) for simultaneous determination of phenformin, rosiglitazone, glibenclamide and glimepiride in dietary supplements and traditional Chinese medicines for diabetes mellitus was proposed. The separation was achieved on a C18 column with the mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile and water (0.05% formic acid (v/v) and 20 mM ammonium acetate), at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min with gradient elution. The analytes were identified and quantified by ESI-MS. Sildenafil was selected as internal standard. Full validation of the proposed method was provided (selectivity, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, precision and accuracy). In contrast to existing methods, the proposed method has obvious advantages of simplicity, rapidity, accuracy and good applicability, and it has been applied to analyze illegal additives in nine dietary supplements and eight traditional Chinese medicines successfully.