Flavonoids are one of the most common secondary metabolites occurring in
plants. Their activity in the Central Nervous System (CNS) including sedative, anxiolytic,
anti-convulsive, anti-depressant and neuro-protective actions is well known and documented.
The most popular methods for detection, identification and structural elucidation
of flavonoids are these based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and mass spectrometry
(MS). NMR allows rapid, high throughput analysis of crude extracts and also
gives stereochemical details about identified substances. However, these methods are expensive
and less sensitive than MS-based techniques. Combining High Performance Liquid
Chromatography (HPLC) with MS detection gives the most powerful tool for analysis
of flavonoids occurring in plants. There is a lot of different approaches to use LC/MS
based techniques for identification of flavonoids and this short review shows the most important.
