High-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray mass spectrometry for rapid and sensitive determination of sanguinarine and chelerythrine in exogenously contaminated honey

A simple, rapid, and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) has been used to determine sanguinarine and chelerythrine in exogenously contaminated honey. Sample extracts were separated on a C-8 reversed-phase HPLC column with acetonitrile-acetate buffer (40:60) as mobile phase. After ESI the abundance of protonated molecules was recorded by selected-ion recording (SIR) of m/z 332.5, 348.5, and 356.5 for sanguinarine, chelerythrine, and the internal standard, tetrahydropolmatine, respectively. The internal standard technique was used to construct calibration plots for quantitation of sanguinarine and chelerythrine; the linear ranges were 5.25-1050 and 3.75-750 ng mL(-1), respectively, with correlation coefficients of 0.9993 and 0.9989, respectively. The limits of detection for sanguinarine and chelerythrine were 1.60 and 1.11 ng mL(-1), respectively.