AUTHOR=Xue Ying , Sheng Yanghao , Wang Jue , Huang Qi , Zhang Fengyu , Wen Ying , Liu Shao , Jiang Yueping TITLE=Fast Screening and Identification of Illegal Adulterated Glucocorticoids in Dietary Supplements and Herbal Products Using UHPLC-QTOF-MS With All-Ion Fragmentation Acquisition Combined With Characteristic Fragment Ion List Classification JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=9 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2021.785475 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2021.785475 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) with all-ion fragmentation (AIF) acquisition was established for an identification and quantification of illegal adulterated glucocorticoids in dietary supplements and herbal products. Next, a novel method called characteristic fragment ion list classification (CFILC) was developed for a fast screening of adulterated compounds. CFILC could provide the characteristic ions comprehensively and completely through direct extract from the MS2 library instead of finding them manually. This is time-saving and provides fast screening results with a high confidence level by filtering of a pre-calculated threshold of similarity scores for illegal adulterants that are not included in the library as well as for new emerging structural analogs. The obtained results demonstrated the great qualitative and quantitative strength of this approach, providing a promising and powerful method for a routine fast screening of illegal adulterated glucocorticoids.