Pharmacokinetic comparison of five tanshinones in normal and arthritic rats after oral administration of Huo Luo Xiao Ling Dan or its single herb extract by UPLC-MS/MS.

A fast, sensitive and reliable ultra performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method has been developed and validated for simultaneous quantitation and pharmacokinetic study of five tanshinones (tanshinone I, tanshinone IIA, tanshinone IIB, dihydrotanshinone I, cryptotanshinone), the bio-active ingredients of Huo Luo Xiao Ling Dan (HLXLD) in rat plasma. After liquid-liquid extraction, chromatographic separation was accomplished on a Shim-pack XR-ODS column (75 × 3.0 mm, 2.2 µm particles) and eluted with a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile-0.05% formic acid aqueous solution (80:20, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min, and the total run time was 7.0 min. The detection was performed on a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry equipped with an electrospray ionization source in positive ionization and multiple reaction monitoring mode. The lower limits of quantification were 0.050-0.400 ng/mL for all the analytes. Linearity, precision and accuracy, the mean extraction recoveries and matrix effects all satisfied criteria for acceptance. This validated method was successfully applied to a comparative pharmacokinetic study of five bio-active components in rat plasma after oral administration of HLXLD or Salvia miltiorrhiza extract in normal and arthritic rats. The results showed that there were different pharmacokinetic characteristics among different groups. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.