Simultaneous determination of sulfur compounds from the sulfur pathway in rat plasma by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry: application to the study of the effect of Shao Fu Zhu Yu decoction

Abstract

A sensitive, accurate, and time-saving approach was developed for the simultaneous quantification of eight sulfur compounds in the sulfur pathway, which could reflect the status of an organism, including oxidative stress, signal transduction, enzyme reaction, and so on. In order to overcome the instability of highly reactive sulfhydryl compounds, N-ethylmaleimide derivatization was adopted to effectively protect sulfhydryl-containing samples. Using isotope-labeled glutathione (GSH-C, N), the validated method was demonstrated to offer satisfactory linearity, accuracy, and precision. Separation was done by UHPLC, using a BEH amide column. Accordingly, 0.1% formic acid acetonitrile was selected as the precipitant. A tandem mass spectrometer was coupled to the chromatographic system and afforded a detection limit of 0.2 ng/mL. Good linearity was maintained over a wide concentration range (r > 0.994), and the accuracy was in the range of 86.6-114% for all the studied compounds. The precision, expressed in RSD%, ranged from 1.1% to 9.4% as intraday variability and less than 13% as interday precision for all of the analytes. The approach was applied to study the potential therapeutic mechanism of a well-known traditional Chinese medicine, Shao Fu Zhu Yu decoction. The results suggested that Shao Fu Zhu Yu decoction might protect against oxidative damage by increasing the concentrations of sulfhydryl compounds. Graphical abstract An approach to quantitatively determining sulfur compounds in the sulfur pathway simultaneously wasestablished and applied to the study of the effect of Shao Fu Zhu Yu decoction.

Identification of prototype compounds and their metabolites in rats’ serum from Xuefu Zhuyu Decoction by UPLC-Q-TOF/MS

“…Then, the rats were fasted with free access to water for 12 h prior to the experiment. For seven consecutive days, the aqueous extract of XFZYD was administrated to the rats intragastrically at a dose of 16.38 g/kg body weight, which was expressed as the weight of decoction pieces ( Zhang et al, 2018 , Fan et al, 2020 ). After the last administration, the blood samples were respectively collected from the retroorbital venous plexuses at 0.5, 1 and 2 h, which were placed at room temperature for 1 h and centrifuged at 8000 rpm for 10 min.…”