Rapid Screening and Quantitative Detection of 6 Prohibited Drugs in Shampoo and Hair Growth Cosmetics by UPLC-MS/MS

Baldness, alopecia and acne are common skin and hair diseases that may adversely influence the patient’s social relationships. For reasons of safety and ease of use, cosmetic products are widely used to control these diseases. However, for the sake of profit and to enhance short-term efficacy, some manufacturers illegally add synthetic drugs to their cosmetic products. According to previous reports, minoxidil, flutamide, spironolactone, finasteride, dutasteride and ketoconazole are the most common topically active anti-alopecia, anti-baldness, and anti-acne drugs. Electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) is suitable for detecting these substances in an illegal product at lower concentrations, with a high degree of specificity, and obtaining additional information about the structure of the analytes. In this study, a method of ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was developed for rapid screening and quantification of six prohibited drugs in shampoo and hair growth cosmetics. The sample was ultrasonic extracted with methanol and separated on Waters Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column（100 mm×2.1 mm×1.7 μm）. The electrospray ionization source in positive ion mode was used for analysising the six prohibited drugs in the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The results indicated that the standard curves were obtained with good correlation coefficients (R²>0.997) in their concentration ranges. The limits of quantitation for six benzotriazole ultraviolet stabilizers were in the range of 0.9-13.3 μg/kg. The mean recoveries at three spiked levels were 84.0%-94.7% with the relative standard deviations of 1.3%-5.6%. Twenty kinds of shampoo and hair growth cosmetics were tested, where no prohibited drugs was found. This method is accurate, simple, rapid, which is suitable for rapid screening and detection of prohibited drugs in shampoo and hair growth cosmetics.