A novel high performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry(HPLC-QqQ/MS)

based on solid phase extraction(SPE) with inorganic porous materials as the adsorbents

was developed for the rapid separation and detection of ginsenosides in Yiqiyangxue oral liquid

a Chinese medicine compound.The adsorption activities of SAPO-34

SAPO-11

ZSM-5

zeolite Y

SBA-15 and multi walled carbon nanotubes(MWCNTs) on ginsenoside Re

Rg1

Rb1 and Ro were investigated.Under the optimized conditions

MWCNTs exhibited the best separation performance as they could reach an adsorption and desorption equilibrium towards ginsenosides within two minutes

respectively.The adsorption rates and desorption recoveries were higher than 98.6% and 96.8%

respectively.The limits of detection were in the range of 0.01-0.05 μg/mL

and the average recoveries were between 90.5%and 99.7% with relative standard deviations of 2.2%-4.9%.Moreover

the developed method was validated to be accurate and sensitive enough to detect and quantify trace amount of ginsenosides.Finally

the new method was successfully used for the separation and detection of the 4 ginsenosides in Yiqiyangxue oral liquid.Results revealed that the method has no obvious adsorption effect on the components other than ginsenosides

reducing the matrix interference and increasing the accuracy of quantification.Hence

HPLC-QqQ/MS combined with the proposed MWCNTs based SPE has a great application potential in the rapid detection of ginsenosides.