Applications of HPLC/MS in the analysis of traditional Chinese medicines

In China.traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) have been used in clinical applications for thousands of years.The successful hyphenation of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry (MS) has been applied widely in TCMs and biological samples analysis.Undoubtedly.HPLC/MS technique has facilitated the understanding of the treatment mechanism of TCMs.We reviewed more than 350 published papers within the last 5 years on HPLC/MS in the analysis of TCMs.The present review focused on the applications of HPLC/MS in the component analysis,metabolites analysis,and pharmacokinetics of TCMs etc.50% of the literature is related to the component analysis of TCMs,which show that this field is the most popular type of research.In the metabolites analysis,HPLC coupled with electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry has been demonstrated to be the powerful tool for the characterization of structural features and fragmentation behavior patterns.This paper presented a brief overview of the applications of HPLC/MS in the analysis of TCMs.HPLC/MS in the fingerprint analysis is reviewed elsewhere.