The use of dietary supplements (DSs) has significantly increased during the past few decades. One of the main factors that support this trend is that consumers assume the use of DSs is a safer and more natural alternative to traditional medical treatments. Like other highly valued food commodities, dietary supplements are a frequent subject of fraud. Deliberate adulteration of these products is typically profit-driven, especially when the necessary natural substance is expensive or in short supply. In such cases, fraudulent producers often �spike� the DSs with various pharmaceuticals such as anti-diabetic drugs, anti-hypertension drugs, synthetic PDE-5 inhibitors and many others in order to intensify the desired pharmacologic effect or mimic the authentic material. The DSs can also be adulterated unintentionally through accidental substitution of plant material which can contain various plant toxins. Since both adulteration with pharmaceuticals and contamination with plant toxins can potentially have serious impacts on consumers' health, rapid, reliable and cost effective methods are needed to control DSs. Until now, a number of approaches have been proposed to control authenticity and safety of DSs. However, most of these methods aim at analysis of only one or a few classes of compounds.  In the current presentation, an approach based on ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to both high and low resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC�MS) enabling qualitative screening and quantification of a wide range of pharmaceuticals and plant toxins in DSs, will be demonstrated. Various aspects of the analytical workflow, such as extraction, chromatographic separation, optimization of detection, and confirmation of analyte identity, will be discussed.

Application of ultra-high liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS) for authenticity and safety control of dietary supplements

245th National Meeting (2013)

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