Simultaneous determination of nine kinds of dominating bile acids in various snake bile by ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography with triple quadrupole linear iontrap mass spectrometry

Snake bile is one of the most expensive traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). However, due to the complicated constitutes of snake bile and the poor ultraviolet absorbance of some trace bile acids (BAs), effective analysis methods for snake bile acids were still unavailable, making it difficult to solve adulteration problems. In present study, ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography with triple quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS) was applied to conduct a quantitative analysis on snake BAs. The mass spectrometer was monitored in the negative ion mode, and multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) program was used to determine the contents of BAs in snake bile. In all, 61 snake bile from 17 commonly used species of three families (Elapidae, Colubridae and Viperidae), along with five batches of commercial snake bile from four companies, were collected and detected. Nine components, Tauro-3α,12α-dihydroxy-7-oxo-5β-cholenoic acid (T1), Tauro-3α,7α,12α,23R-tetrahydroxy-5β-cholenoic acid (T2), taurocholic acid (TCA), glycocholic acid (GCA), taurochenodeoxycholic acid (TCDCA), taurodeoxycholic acid (TDCA), cholic acid (CA), Tauro-3α,7α-dihydroxy-12-oxo-5β-cholenoic acid (T3), and Tauro-3α,7α,9α,16α-tetrahydroxy-5β-cholenoic acid (T4) were simultaneously and rapidly determined for the first time. In these BAs, T1 and T2, self-prepared with purity above 90%, were first reported with their quantitative determination, and the latter two (T3 and T4) were tentatively determined by quantitative analysis multi-components by single marker (QAMS) method for roughly estimating the components without reference. The developed method was validated with acceptable linearity (r2 ≥ 0.995), precision (RSD ＜ 6.5%) and recovery (RSD ＜ 7.5%). It turned out that the contents of BAs among different species were also significantly different; T1 was one of the principle bile acids in some common snake bile, and also was the characteristic one in Viperidae and Elapidae; T2 was the dominant components in Enhydris chinensis. This quantitative study of BAs in snake bile is a remarkable improvement for clarifying the bile acid compositions and evaluating the quality of snake bile.