To established a method for the simultaneous determination of 18 kinds of illegally added chemical components in uric-acid-lowering health food by ultra performance liquid chromatography.

The samples were extracted by methanol (with 0.1% formic acid) ultrasonic extraction, the separation was executed on an Phenomenex Luna ®Omega C₁₈ column (2.1 mm×100 mm, 1.6 μm), using methanol (A)-acetonitrile (B)-0.2% formic acid aqueous solution (C) as the mobile phase for gradient elution, and detected by diode array detector.

This method effectively distinguishes between salicylic acid and aspirin and the results showed that the 18 kinds of uric-acid-lowering components had good linearity in the linear range with the correlation coefficients greater than or equal to 0.9995; the limits of detection ranged from 2.0–112.8 mg/kg, the average recoveries ranged from 98.5%–110.6%, and the relative standard deviations ranged from 0.2%–4.4%. The method was applied to screen 35 batches of samples, 4 batches of unlabeled components were detected, 2 batch detected diclofenac, 1 batch detected piroxicam and 1 batch detected prednisone acetate.

The method is easy to operate, has good selectivity,sensitivity and accuracy, and can be used for the determi nation of illegally added drugs of uric-acid-lowering components in health food.