Simultaneous identification of 50 illegal adulterants in dietary supplements using high-performance liquid...

Health hazards associated with the ingestion of dietary supplements containing illegal adulterants have been reported. High-performance liquid chromatographysingle quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is useful for identification of illegal adulterants in dietary supplements because of its moderate sensitivity and wide accessibility. Previously, we reported a method for the simultaneous identification of 18 illegal adulterants in dietary supplements using LC-MS. Considering numerous analogs of pharmaceutical ingredients recently identified, developing a more convenient screening method to identify a broader range of such compounds is essential. In this study, we introduced another LC-MS-based method to simultaneously identify 50 illegal adulterants in dietary supplements, including newly identified compounds such as descarbonsildenafil and N-phenylpropoxyphenylcarbodenafil. The proposed method achieved clear separation of the targeted peaks in their extracted ion chromatograms. All coefficients of determination (r²) exceeded 0.9794, with most compounds showing good linearity above 0.99. Recovery tests confirmed the specificity of detection for each compound, with recovery rates ranging from 74.9 % to 127.7 % and relative standard deviations below 21.3 %. Validation results demonstrated the method's suitability for identifying all 50 targeted compounds and quantifying 32 compounds with acceptable accuracy and precision. The method also successfully detected illegal adulterants in positive samples. Thus, the proposed method may be useful for identifying-and partially quantifying-illegal adulterants present in dietary supplements.