Characterization of the chemical constituents in Da-Huang-Gan-Cao-Tang by liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography coupled with ion trap mass spectrometry.

In this work, the chemical constituents in Da-Huang-Gan-Cao-Tang, a traditional Chinese formula, were studied by liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography coupled with ion trap mass spectrometry for the first time. Among the 146 compounds detected in Da-Huang-Gan-Cao-Tang, 104 compounds were identified unambiguously or tentatively based on their accurate molecular weight and multistage MS data, including one potential novel compound and two reported in Glycyrrhiza genus for the first time. The possible fragmentation pathways were proposed and fragmentation rules of the major types of compounds were concluded. This study provided an example to facilitate the tedious identification of chemical composition in traditional Chinese medicine, and maybe a promising reference approach to research the analogous formulae.