Methylglyoxal (MGO), a very reactive metabolite of glucose, plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of several chronic diseases associated with diabetes, and it has been validated as an attractive target for them. In the present study, a simple and effective method, namely pre-column incubation followed by fast high performance liquid chromatography based on superficially porous particles (shell), coupled with diode array detection and tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-DAD-MSn), was proposed for rapid and high-throughput screening of natural MGO scavengers directly from the crude extract of Polygonum cuspidatum Sieb. et Zucc, a well-known traditional Chinese medicine which was used for treatment of diabetic complications. The hypothesis is that upon reaction with MGO, the peak areas of components with MGO scavenging potency in the chromatogram will be significantly reduced or disappear, and the structural characterization could be achieved by UHPLC-DAD-MSn hyphenated technique. First of all, 12 compounds in P. cuspidatum were well separated within shorter time (similar to 12 min) than previous methods and identified, and two of them, i.e. 3,5,4'-trihydroxystilbene-3-O-(6 ''-galloyl)-glucoside (3) and emodin-8-O-(6'-malonyl)-glucoside (8) were firstly reported ingredients. After incubation with MGO, four stilbene derivatives were demonstrated to possess potential MGO trapping activities. Furthermore, it was proved that both polydatin (piceid) and resveratrol exhibited effective MGO-trapping capacity by UHPLC analysis, and they could significantly inhibit the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in the human serum albumin (HSA)-MGO assay, indicating that they were potential candidate agents for delaying and preventing diabetic complications. Additionally, MGO trapping mechanism exploration by UHPLC-MSn showed that the positions 2 and 4 of the A ring of stilbene were major active sites for trapping MGO to form both mono- and di-MGO adducts, however, the glucosylation of the hydroxyl group would significantly decrease the trapping efficiency. Collectively, the current work provides a very promising method for rapid discovery of natural MGO scavengers directly from complex matrices such as herbal medicines with huge resources. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.