Mateescu Cristina, Popescu Anca Mihaela, Radu Gabriel Lucian, Onisei Tatiana, Raducanu Adina Elena
National Office for Medicinal, Aromatic Plants and Bee Products - National Research and Development Institute for Food Bioresources - IBA Bucharest, 6 Dinu Vintila Str., 021102, Bucharest, Romania.
Faculty of Applied Chemistry and Materials Science - University Politehnica of Bucharest, 1-7 Polizu Str., 011061, Bucharest, Romania.
Adv Pharm Bull. 2017 Jun;7(2):251-259. doi: 10.15171/apb.2017.030. Epub 2017 Jun 30.
This study was carried out in order to find a reliable method for the fast detection of adulterated herbal food supplements with sexual enhancement claims. As some herbal products are advertised as "all natural", their "efficiency" is often increased by addition of active pharmaceutical ingredients such as PDE-5 inhibitors, which can be a real health threat for the consumer. Adulterants, potentially present in 50 herbal food supplements with sexual improvement claims, were detected using 2 spectroscopic methods - Raman and Fourier Transform Infrared - known for reliability, reproductibility, and an easy sample preparation. GC-MS technique was used to confirm the potential adulterants spectra. About 22% (11 out of 50 samples) of herbal food supplements with sexual enhancement claims analyzed by spectroscopic and spectrometric methods proved to be "enriched" with active pharmaceutical compounds such as: sildenafil and two of its analogues, tadalafil and phenolphthalein. The occurence of phenolphthalein could be the reason for the non-relevant results obtained by FTIR method in some samples. 91% of the adulterated herbal food supplements were originating from China. The results of this screening highlighted the necessity for an accurate analysis of all alleged herbal aphrodisiacs on the Romanian market. This is a first such a screening analysis carried out on herbal food supplements with sexual enhancement claims.
本研究旨在寻找一种可靠的方法，用于快速检测宣称具有性增强功效的掺假草药食品补充剂。由于一些草药产品被宣传为“全天然”，其“功效”往往通过添加活性药物成分（如磷酸二酯酶-5抑制剂）来提高，而这可能对消费者的健康构成真正威胁。使用拉曼光谱和傅里叶变换红外光谱这两种以可靠性、可重复性和易于样品制备而闻名的光谱方法，检测了50种宣称具有性改善功效的草药食品补充剂中可能存在的掺假物。气相色谱-质谱联用技术用于确认潜在掺假物的光谱。通过光谱和光谱分析方法分析的宣称具有性增强功效的草药食品补充剂中，约22%（50个样品中的11个）被证明“富含”活性药物化合物，如：西地那非及其两种类似物、他达拉非和酚酞。酚酞的出现可能是某些样品中傅里叶变换红外光谱法获得不相关结果的原因。91%的掺假草药食品补充剂来自中国。此次筛查结果凸显了对罗马尼亚市场上所有所谓的草药壮阳药进行准确分析的必要性。这是首次对宣称具有性增强功效的草药食品补充剂进行此类筛查分析。
