The Applications and Features of Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry in the Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine

With increasingly improved separation of complex samples and detection of unknown material capabilities, liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) research. This article describes the principles of liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS) and their advantages and disadvantages in qualitative and quantitative analysis of TCM. We retrieved research literatures about the application of LC-MS in TCM published during the past five years at home and abroad. To better guide the analysis of TCM, this review mainly focuses on the applications category of LC-MS, how often different kinds of LC-MS are used, and the qualitative and quantitative ability of various LC-MS in the study of TCM.