Non-targeted screening of illegal added hypoglycemic drugs and their derivatives in functional foods using characteristic fragment ions scanning based on liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry.

Abstract

Functional foods that are illegally adulterated with chemical hypoglycemic drugs or their derivatives pose serious risks to human health. However, the detection of these compounds is a challenge due to the unknown nature of their structures, particularly as many of these compounds are newly synthesized and lack standardized references. In this study, we developed a non-targeted screening strategy for detecting illegally added hypoglycemic drugs and their derivatives in oral solution and hard capsule functional foods. This strategy utilizes a self-established characteristic fragment ions mass spectrum database based on ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole/orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry. Nine characteristic fragment ions were identified by analyzing the mass spectrometric fragmentation patterns of hypoglycemic drugs. Meanwhile, the precursor and fragment ions of 38 known hypoglycemic drugs were collected and incorporated into the mass database. The detection limits of hypoglycemic drugs in oral solution and hard capsule samples were 0.01-10 μg/L and 0.01-50 μg/kg, respectively. Applying the non-targeted method to 20 batches of suspicious samples, we found that 3 batches of samples contained illegal added drugs. Furthermore, we identified a previously unrecorded hypoglycemic drug not present in the mass database. These results indicate that the developed strategy is a powerful tool for the rapid and highly sensitive identification of both known and unknown hypoglycemic drugs, as well as their derivatives in functional foods.