Urinary metabolites of nobiletin orally administered to rats.

During the course of our systematic investigation of the metabolism of flavonoids, the polymethoxyflavone nobiletin, occurring in the fruits of Citrus depressa, was orally administered to rats. The urinary metabolites were separated and identified by three-dimensional HPLC equipped with a photodiode array detector and the structure was determined by spectroscopic methods to be 4'-hydroxy-3',5,6,7,8-pentamethoxyflavone (1).