Simultaneous Determination of 37 Anti-infective Drugs Potentially Illegally Added to Cosmetics that Claimed to have Anti-acne Effects by UHPLC-Q-TOF HRMS.

Currently, illegal addition of anti-infective drugs has been detected in some cosmetics to achieve rapid sterilization and anti-inflammatory effects. However, the abuse of anti-infective drugs may endanger the health of citizens. Thus, methods for the detection and quantitative determinations of such substances should be developed. In this paper, a method combining ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOF HRMS) was designed. Its significance and potential were verified by the identification, confirmation, and quantification of 37 illegally added anti-infective drugs in cosmetics that claimed to have anti-acne effects. The method validation revealed a satisfactory linear relationship, and each coefficient of determination (r²) was higher than 0.9943. The LOD and LLOQ results were in the ranges of 0.0003–0.1063 μg g⁻¹ and 0.0012–0.3545 μg g⁻¹, respectively. The accuracy ranged from 70.8 to 122.8%, whereas the intra- and inter-day precisions were in the ranges of 0.2–12.8% and 0.2–13.8%, correspondingly. The mean recoveries were in the range of 70.1–117.7%, and the matrix effects ranged from 73.0 to 121.4%. Of the 200 batches of cosmetics that claimed to have anti-acne effects, three batches were positive, with chemical components such as metronidazole, lincomycin, clindamycin, tinidazole and miconazole nitrate being discovered. Therefore, the Q-TOF spectrometry could be widely applied in routine screening of adulteration in cosmetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]