Three different commercially available melatonin preparations were analyzed by on-line HPLC-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry. All three samples contained the same impurities at the ∼0.1-0.5% level of parent melatonin. Based on accurate mass-HPLC-MS and tandem mass spectrometric analyses, two contaminants (both MH+ = 249) were identified as hydroxylation products of melatonin. One compound (MH+ = 265) was determined to be a C-2 oxidation product of hydroxymelatonin and a group of four regioisomers (MH+ = 477) were identified as melatonin-formaldehyde condensation products. These latter contaminants are structural analogues of the case-associated peak "E" found in L-tryptophan implicated in onset of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. The significance of these findings is discussed.
CITATION STYLE
Naylor, S., Johnson, K. L., Williamson, B. L., Klarskov, K., & Gleich, G. J. (2000). Structural characterization of contaminants in commercial preparations of melatonin by on-line HPLC-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry. In Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology (Vol. 467, pp. 769–777). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4709-9_99
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