A high throughput coupled with high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, G2 in 10 traditional Chinese medicines / 中国中药杂志

As the dilution procedure was applied, a simple, rapid and cost-effective high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for determination of aflatoxin B1, B2, G1, and G2 was successfully by performed in a total 83 samples of 10 traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs), which were collected from 5 different hospital pharmacies and 5 different medical stores in Guangzhou city. Matrix effects of these 10 TCMs were ranged from 80.23% to 115.5% in low, intermediate and high concentration levels, indicating that the negative effect was overcome in this study. Meanwhile, the analysis method was proved to be stable and reliable during the whole analysis using Semen Armeniacae Amarum spiked 3 concentration levels of standard solution as quality control samples and the RSD < 6.6% was obtained. The contamination levels of 83 investigated samples were 13.89% and 17.02% in hospital pharmacies and medical stores, respectively. The result was presented to provide relevant reference and supplement to those researchers in TCMs analysis and screening.

Separation and molecular identification of fungal contamination on surface of 15 Chinese herbal medicines / 中国中药杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To evaluate fungal contamination on the surface of Chinese herbal medicines and explore an appropriate method for fast and efficient identification of contaminant fungi.</p><p><b>METHOD</b>Chinese herbal medicines were first washed and the washing solution was plated onto potato dextrose agar (PDA) to obtain the pure isolates. For molecular identification, two new pairs of specific primers were designed according to ITS region of fungi genome sequences. The strains were identified through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequence analysis.</p><p><b>RESULT</b>Fifty fungal strains were obtained from the surface of 15 Chinese herbal medicines with the percent of contaminated samples of 93.3%. Twenty-seven strains among them were successfully identified.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Fungal contamination on the surface of Chinese herbal medicines is quite common. Although different fungal species were isolated, the genus Aspergillus was the predominant. The primer pairs developed in this study are compatible and can be used to identify fungal species from the surface of Chinese herbal medicines.</p>