Rapid control of Chinese star anise fruits and teas for neurotoxic anisatin by Direct Analysis in Real Time high resolution mass spectrometry

The relevance of pharmacognosy in pharmacological research on herbal medicinal products

“…Illicium anisatum, however, contains the neurotoxic sesquiterpene dilactone anisatin, a potent noncompetitive GABA antagonist [43]. Admixture of this species to I. verum has, therefore, caused numerous cases of adverse neurologic reactions such as nausea, hallucinations, and epileptic seizures, particularly in small infants, as star anise tea is frequently used as a remedy for infant colic [44][45][46].…”

Analysis of the neurotoxin anisatin in star anise by LC-MS/MS

“…The literature reports several anisatin derivatives such as neoanisatin, pseudoanisatin and veranisatins A to E, but all have different molecular masses and thus cannot correspond to the unknown peaks observed (Kouno et al 1988;Nakamura et al 1996;Zhu et al 2009). Consequently, the signals observed may be due to the occurrence of isobars but we can exclude bergenin as suggested by Shen et al (2012) because it has different mass transitions.…”

Analysis of pharmaceutical products and herbal medicines using ambient mass spectrometry

“…Many commercially available drugs [80] and forensic drugs [81] [83] were successfully analyzed by DART-MS using this strategy. For easily and automated manipulation, the loaded melting point tubes/Dip-it tubes were generally placed on a Dip-it sampler for introduction of samples, and the DART-MS analysis of methanol extract of Radix Aconiti Preparata [84], the boiled water extracts of Chinese star anise and toxic Japanese star anise [85], 70% aqueous ethanol of Morus alba L. [86], Danshen injection [87,88], and a herbal preparation of Sophora flavescens and Heterosmilax japonica Kunth [89] were implemented via this strategy. The liquid-phase medicines could also be loaded by a metal screen [90] or a stainless steel metal grid [91] and introduced by a Transmission module [90] or an ID-CUBE [91] for DART-MS analysis, and geniposide in Re Du Ning injection [90] was quantitatively determined and phenolic components in methanol extract of Bergenia crassifolia L. leaves [91] were analyzed by this strategy.…”