Sensitive bromine-based screening of potential toxic furanoids in Dioscorea bulbifera L.

•The method combining LC-Q-q-Q MS with LC-Q-TOF MS dramatically increased the sensitivity of the screening of potential toxic furanoids.•The method can provide the definite molecular weights of those furanoids whose structure remains unknown.•The detection of the analytical approach selectively heads to the furan moiety of analytes.

Numerous furanoids have been reported to be toxic, and many of them were found in herbal medicines. Toxicities of furanoids are suggested to result from the generation of cis-enedials via biotransformation. The detection of the electrophilic metabolic intermediates is a challenge. Earlier, we developed a selective approach to screen potential toxic furanoids, through which we found two major furanoids, diosbulbin B and 8-epidiosbulbin E acetate, in Dioscorea bulbifera L., a known furanoid-containing and hepatotoxic herbal medicine. In the present study, we improved the approach to analyze furanoids in D. bulbifera L., which allowed us to detect additional six potential furanoids, including diosbulbin A, diosbulbin D, diosbulbin E, diosbulbin F, diosbulbin M, and diosbulbin D glycoside. The achievements of this study enhanced the sensitivity to screen potential toxic furanoids through elevating S/N values by approximately 3 times. This will facilitate the understanding of mechanisms of toxic actions of D. bulbifera L. and other furanoid-containing toxic herbal medicines.