Pharmacokinetics of Sijunzi decoction in rats' plasma after oral administration using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry

• Published in: Biomedical chromatography 2018-07, p.e4334
• Main Authors: Qu, Gonglin, Qi, Xuesong, Shao, Shuai, Li, Chen, Wang, Chunyan, Wang, Chengfang, Gou, Qiao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1099-0801

Sijunzi decoction (SJZD) is one of the most well-known traditional Chinese herbal formulations. This study elucidates the pharmacokinetics of SJZD in rats' plasma after the administration of a single oral dose of 3 mL/kg using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-Q-TOF/MS) with bergapten as an internal standard. The separation was performed on an Agilent Zorbax Eclipse Plus C Column (2.1 × 50 mm, 1.8 μm) by elution with acetonitrile and water (containing 0.1% formic acid) at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. Electrospray ionization in positive and negative ion modes was used to quantify six compounds, with monitored ion m/z values of 249.1397 [M + H] and 529.3857 [M + H] for atractylenolide III (ATL-III) and pachymic acid (PA) , respectively, and m/z of 1107.6638 [M - H] , 991.5746 [M - H + HCOO] , 821.3714 [M - H] , 469.3315 [M - H] for ginsenoside Rb Re, glycyrrhizic acid (GL), and glycyrrhetinic acid (GA), respectively. The calibration curves for ginsenoside Rb , Re, ATL-III, PA, GL, and GA ranged from 0.0015-0.75, 0.001-0.5, 0.0004-0.2, 0.003-0.9, 0.0015-0.3, and 0.001-1.5 μg/mL, respectively. The intra- and inter-day precisions (RSD %) were less than 14.3%. The rapid, sensitive and specific UHPLC-ESI-Q-TOF/MS method developed and validated in this study was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of the six components of SJZD using rat plasma for pharmacokinetic studies after oral administration.