Liquid chromatography/electrospray tandem mass spectrometry of terpenoid lactones in Ginkgo biloba

✍ Scribed by Yongkai Sun; Wenkui Li; John F. Fitzloff; Richard B. van Breemen

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 151 KB
• Volume: 40
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1076-5174
• DOI: 10.1002/jms.795

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Ginkgo biloba (ginkgo) is one of most frequently used botanical dietary supplements. The bioactive constituents include the terpenoid lactones consisting of bilobalide and the ginkgolides A, B, C and J. A new assay based on high‐performance liquid chromatography/electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) was developed for the measurement of the terpenoid lactones in ginkgo products such as leaf powder and extracts. Initially, the MS/MS fragmentation pathways of ginkgolides were investigated to identify abundant fragment ions that might be useful for the sensitive and selective detection of ginkgolides and bilobalide during LC/MS/MS. Then, sample preparation and clean‐up procedures were streamlined to maximize throughput by taking advantage of the selectivity of LC/MS/MS detection. Analyte recoveries exceeded 90%, the intra‐assay and inter‐assay relative standard deviations were <5%, the relative error was <8% and the limits of detection and quantification were 3.6–120 and 11–350 fmol, depending on the analyte that was injected on to the LC column. Therefore, this LC/MS/MS assay facilitated the rapid quantitative analysis of ginkgolides A, B, C and J and bilobalide in ginkgo dietary supplements with excellent recovery, reproducibity, accuracy and sensitivity. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.