Qualitative screening of prohibited drugs in dietary supplements using a homemade miniature mass spectrometer

Qualitative screening of prohibited drugs in dietary supplements based on a miniature homemade mass spectrometer was presented, and its application for real health sample analyses was demonstrated in this work. To alleviate the labor and equipment-intensive procedures of traditional detection methods, simplified sample preparation procedures were coupled with one-time use Nano electrospray ionization sources for practical sample analyses. A small tandem mass spectrometry database was built for 16 illegal adulterants, so that these prohibited drugs could be quickly screened in different samples. Tandem mass spectrometry results were compared with a commercial orbitrap mass spectrometer. After exploring some possible factors, such as the sonication duration, the reproducibility of the method and the effect of matrix on sensitivity, the instrument and dataset were then used for the screening of these 16 adulterants in five commercial products: one weight loss product and four products claiming to strengthen immunity. Illicit adulterants were detected in the weight loss product but not in other samples. These results were also confirmed using the conventional liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry technique.