Simultaneous determination of ten flavonoids of crude and wine‐processed Radix Scutellariae aqueous extracts in rat plasma by UPLC‐ESI‐MS/MS and its application to a comparative pharmacokinetic study

Abstract

Radix Scutellariae (RS) is a herbal medicine with various pharmacological activities to treat inflammation, respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, etc. In this study, a rapid, sensitive and selective UPLC-ESI-MS/MS method was developed for simultaneous determination of 10 flavonoids - scutellarin, scutellarein, chrysin, wogonin, baicalein, apigenin, wogonoside, oroxylin A-7-O-glucuronide, oroxylin A and baicalin - from RS aqueous extracts in rat plasma with propyl paraben as internal standard (IS). Chromatographic separation was achieved on a C18 column using gradient elution with the mobile phase consisting of methanol and water (containing 0.1% formic acid) at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The detection was performed in multiple reaction monitoring mode using electrospray ionization in negative mode. The validated method showed good linearity over a wide concentration range (r >0.9935). The intra- and interday assay variabilities were <9.5% and <12.4% for all analytes, respectively. The extraction recovery ranged from 71.2 to 89.7% for each analyte and IS. This method was successfully applied to pharmacokinetic comparision after oral administration of crude and wine-processed RS aqueous extracts. There were significant differences in some pharmacokinetic parameters of most analytes between crude and wine-processed RS. This suggested that wine-processing exerted effects absorption of most flavonoids.

Simultaneous determination of baicalin, baicalein, wogonoside, wogonin, scutellarin, berberine, coptisine, ginsenoside Rb1 and ginsenoside Re of Banxia xiexin decoction in rat plasma by LC–MS/MS and its application to a pharmacokinetic study

“…As shown in Figure , all of the five flavonoids exhibited the double‐peak phenomenon after BXD administration, which may be attributed to enterohepatic circulation (Xing, Chen, & Zhong, ), intestinal flora biotransformation (Noh et al, ), site‐specific absorption (Zhang et al, ) or transporter‐involved mechanisms (Kalapos‐Kovács et al, ). This finding was consistent with previous studies (Cai et al, ; Cui et al, ; Tong et al, ). Among these studies, the first absorption peak of baicalin, baicalein, wogonoside and scutellarin that occurred at 4 h was significantly longer than that of crude Radix Scutellariae extract as reported before.…”

“…To study the pharmacokinetics of nine compounds (baicalin, baicalein, wogonoside, wogonin, scutellarin, berberine, coptisine, the ginsenoside Rb1 and ginsenoside Re) in vivo , several analytical methods have been established by HPLC (Li, Zhang, et al, ; Tsai & Tsai, ), UPLC (Chen, Li, et al, ), LC–MS (Xia et al, ; Zhu et al, ), UPLC–MS (Joo et al, ), LC–MS/MS (Feng et al, ; Tong et al, ; Zhang, Ma, Liu, Jiang, & Wang, ; Zhao et al, ) and UPLC–MS/MS (Cui et al, ; Qian et al, ). A pharmacokinetic study of the constituents in one of the composition herbs in BXD has been reported (Wang et al, ), but there are few reports on pharmacokinetic studies of the nine active components after administration of BXD in rats simultaneously.…”

Development and validation of a UHPLC–MS/MS method for the simultaneous determination of five bioactive flavonoids in rat plasma and comparative pharmacokinetic study after oral administration of Xiaochaihu Tang and three compatibilities

“…And the main pharmacokinetic parameters are summarized in Table . After oral administration, the concentration–time curves of BCN, WGS, BCE, WON, OA displayed double peaks phenomenon, and all analytes tested were absorbed rapidly from the rat gastrointestinal tract, which was in accordance with those reported in the literature . The first peak occurred before 1 h and the second peak over the 5–8 h for all analytes after administration.…”

Profiling and analysis of multiple compounds in rhubarb decoction after processing by wine steaming using UHPLC–Q‐TOF‐MS coupled with multiple statistical strategies

“…Then, the chemical profile and the content of bioactive compounds in the raw herbal drugs would be changed. Now, it has already been widely accepted as the major mechanism underlying the raw herbal processing .…”