Rapid Detection of Medicine Based on New Dielectric Barrier Discharge Ionization Mass Spectrometry

Currently, rapid detection of effective components in synthetic drugs and herbal medicine remains an important and difficult issue of medicine research. A novel ionization technique, called dielectric barrier discharge ionization (DBDI), has strong ionization ability, and is suitable for weak polar substances. Besides, this technique possesses many intrinsic advantages, such as simplicity, rapidity, no complicated sample pretreatment, etc. In this study, a new DBDI ion source, based on single electrode technique, was used to detect four weak polar synthetic drugs. The results showed that the protonated molecular ions [M+H](+) of four weak polar synthetic drugs were observed obviously. What's more, the DBDI ion source was also used for the rapid analysis of Radix Aconiti and Radix Aconiti Preparata pieces without any sample pretreatment. The result showed that the protonated molecular ions [M+H](+) and fragment ions [M+H-60](+) of aconitine, hypaconitine, and mesaconitine were detected in Radix Aconiti. And only the fragment ions [M+H-60](+) were detected in Radix Aconiti Preparat. The researches indicated that diester aconitine and monoester aconitine were the main effective components of Radix Aconiti Radix and Aconiti Preparat, respectively. The new DBDI ion source provided a fast and reliable method to identify effective components of medicine, showing a broad application prospects in synthetic drugs and herbal medicine research.