LC-MS-based metabolomics for detecting adulteration in Tribulus terrestris-derived dietary supplements
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The widespread usage of Tribulus terrestris dietary supplements has elicited concerns over product authenticity and possible adulteration. This research utilized an untargeted liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) metabolomics methodology to assess the composition of T. terrestris -derived supplements. Authentic plant materials , simulated adulterated samples, and commercial products were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA), orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), and a convolutional neural network tool. The presence of PDE5 inhibitors and anabolic steroids in spiked samples was confirmed. Certain commercial products included undisclosed green tea and citrus-derived chemicals, likely incorporated to amplify stimulant effects and support testosterone-enhancing claims. Additionally, spirost-4-ene-3,12-dione was recognized as an indicator of possible steroidal saponin decomposition resulting from storage or processing conditions. This study illustrates the efficacy of LC-HRMS metabolomics in detecting supplement adulteration and emphasizes the need for rigorous quality control protocols to guarantee customer safety and product integrity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".