In Asia, some herbal preparations have been found to be adulterated with undeclared synthetic medicines to increase their therapeutic efficiency. Many of these adulterants were found to be toxic when overdosed and have been documented to bring about severe, even life-threatening acute poisoning events. The objective of this study is to develop a rapid and sensitive ambient ionization mass spectrometric platform to characterize the undeclared toxic adulterated ingredients in herbal preparations. Several common adulterants were spiked into different herbal preparations and human sera to simulate the clinical conditions of acute poisoning. They were then sampled with a metallic probe and analyzed by the thermal desorption-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. The experimental parameters including sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, and turnaround time were prudently optimized in this study. Since tedious and time-consuming pretreatment of the sample is unnecessary, the toxic adulterants could be characterized within 60 s. The results can help emergency physicians to make clinical judgments and prescribe appropriate antidotes or supportive treatment in a time-sensitive manner.

中文翻译：

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用于紧急护理的环境电离质谱法快速表征草药制剂中未申报的药物

在亚洲，一些草药制剂被发现掺有未申报的合成药物，以提高其治疗效果。许多这些掺假物被发现在过量服用时有毒，并有记录表明会导致严重甚至危及生命的急性中毒事件。本研究的目的是开发一个快速、灵敏的环境电离质谱平台来表征草药制剂中未申报的有毒掺假成分。将几种常见的掺杂剂掺入不同的草药制剂和人血清中，以模拟急性中毒的临床情况。然后用金属探针对它们取样并通过热解吸电喷雾电离质谱法进行分析。本研究对灵敏度、特异性、准确性和周转时间等实验参数进行了审慎优化。由于无需对样品进行繁琐且耗时的预处理，因此可以在 60 秒内对有毒掺假物进行表征。结果可以帮助急诊医生做出临床判断并及时开出适当的解毒剂或支持治疗。