Citation

Marín-Sáez J, Romero-González R, Frenich AG, Egea-González FJ. Drug Test. Anal. 2018; 10(10): 1579-1589.

Affiliation

Department of Chemistry and Physics, Analytical Chemistry Area, University of Almería, Research Centre for Agricultural and Food Biotechnology (BITAL), Agrifood Campus of International Excellence ceiA3, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, E-04120, Almería, Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/dta.2416

PMID

29808589

Abstract

Homeopathic products are still a controversial issue in modern medicine, understood as complementary or alternative medicine (CAM). In this particular case, homeopathic products prepared from Atropa Belladonna extracts may present specific problems due to the effects derived from its components. This article applies a simple, rapid and reliable method to the analysis of different homeopathic products obtained from Atropa Belladonna; drugs containing high concentration of plant extracts; and Atropa Belladonna seeds. The method was based on a simple solid phase preconcentration method followed by ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry using Exactive-Orbitrap as analyser. A in-house database has been set and atropine and scopolamine have been the compounds detected at highest concentrations in homeopathic products from Atropa belladonna extracts (4.57 and 2.56 μg/kg respectively), in Belladonna ointment (4007 and 1139 μg/kg respectively) and Belladonna seeds (338 and 32.1 mg/kg respectively). Other tropane alkaloids as tropine, apoatropine, aposcopolamine, tropinone, homatropine and anisodamine were detected at lower concentrations (0.04-1.36 μg/kg). When untargeted analysis was performed, other tropane alkaloids were identified in the tested samples, as ecgonine (0.003 μg/kg), benzoylecgonine (0.56 μg/kg), calystegines A (19.6 μg/kg), B (33.1 μg/kg) and C (1.01 μg/kg). Finally other compounds present in the homeopathic products, as sugars (fructose, glucose and lactose) or amino acids (valine, ornithine, leucine and phenylalanine), were identified.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Atropa belladonna; Homeopathic products; Orbitrap-MS; tropane alkaloids; untargeted analysis