Precursor ion scan enhanced rapid identification of the chemical constituents of Danhong injection by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry: An integrated strategy.

Danhong injection (DHI) is a Chinese Material Medical standardized traditional Chinese medicine injection (TCMI) used for the treatment of coronary heart disease and cerebral ischemia. The present study aims to describe and exemplify an UPLC-QTrap based integrated strategy enhanced by precursor ion (PRE) scan, to systematically and rapidly identify the chemical constituents of DHI. After untargeted EMS-IDA-EPI scan, fragmentation study of representative components and focused PRE scans, 90 compounds were tentatively identified. Compared with the single full scan, the presented strategy provided high sensitivity to phenolic compounds with the help of PRE scan mode and QqQ instrument. Considering the abundant phenolic contents in DHI, the established strategy was designed to give sensitive and systematic characterization of phenolic constituents. The results may provide more information to help illustrate the relationship between the complicated constituents and the therapeutic effects of DHI. This strategy may also be applied in researches on other traditional Chinese medicine products.