Simultaneous determination of synthetic phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors in dietary supplements by liquid chromatography-high resolution/mass spectrometry

Abstract

After success of sildenafil for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, a large number of its analogues have been approved from FDA. Recently, the illegal dietary supplements which include sildenafil, vardenafil, tadalafil, or analogues of these drugs as ingredient have been widely distributed. Therefore, the determination of the residue of synthetic phosphodi-esterase-5 (PDE-5) inhibitors in dietary supplements is highly required due to indiscriminate and unintentional overdose caused nausea, chest pains, fainting and irregular heartbeat. In this paper, we report a rapid and sensitive analytical method for the simultaneous determination of nine phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors by liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrome-try. The present method was found to be accurate and reproducible with 40 μg/g of the limit of quantification for the nine PDE-5 inhibitors. The developed method can be successfully applied to the analysis of the seven illegal dietary supplements.