Abstract:

A sensitive method was developed for the simultaneous determination of nine antidepressants in traditional Chinese medicines and health food by ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) based on the sonication-assisted extraction. The separation was performed on a Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C₁₈ column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) by using 0.1% (v/v) formic acid aqueous solution and acetonitrile as the mobile phases with gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The electrospray ionization (ESI) source in positive ion mode was used for the analysis of the nine antidepressants in the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The standard curves for the nine antidepressants were obtained with good correlation coefficients (R²>0.998) in the concentration range of 0.04-20 μg/L. The limits of detection for the nine antidepressants were in the range of 0.0068-0.034 μg/L. The average recoveries at three spiked levels (0.5, 1, 5 μg/L) were 77.7%-100.8% with the relative standard deviation of 0.9%-9.1%. The method is accurate, simple, rapid and feasible for the simultaneous determination of the antidepressants in traditional Chinese medicines and health food.

Key words: antidepressants, health food, traditional Chinese medicines, ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS)