Pharmacokinetics of Sijunzi decoction in rat plasma after oral administration using ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography electrospray ionization quadrupole–time of flight mass spectrometry

Abstract

Sijunzi decoction (SJZD) is one of the most well-known traditional Chinese herbal formulations. This study elucidates the pharmacokinetics of SJZD in rat 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 were 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 <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.

Rapid analysis of components in Qizhiweitong tablets and plasma after oral administration in rats by UPLC–Q‐TOF–MS/MS based on a self‐developed database

“…Typically, six major fragment ions were generated from the parent ion directly at m / z 803.3866, 645.3647, 469.3382, 351.0569, and 193.0355, which corresponded to m / z 803.3866 [M − H − H 2 O] − , 645.3604 [M − H − C 6 H 8 O 6 ] − , 469.3315 [M − H − 2C 6 H 8 O 6 ] − , 351.0571 [2C 6 H 8 O 6 ] − and 193.0355 [C 6 H 10 O 7 − H] − , respectively. Compared with a previous study (Qu et al, 2018), C101 was identified as glycyrrhizic acid. Figure 3e shows the production spectra and the potential MS/MS fragmentation pathway.…”

Phytochemical Analysis Using UPLC-MS/MS Combined with Network Pharmacology Methods to Explore the Biomarkers for the Quality Control of Lingguizhugan Decoction

“…On the basis of the qualitative study and network pharmacology, the characteristic parameters of 20 main chemical components were investigated by the MRM analysis method, including parent ion, daughter ion, declustering potential, and collision energy. In order to satisfy the simultaneous quantification of multiple components, taking into account the response of different chemical components in MRM mode and the content differences in LGZG, the DP and CE of some chemical components were dynamically adjusted, as detailed in Table 3 [ 31 – 37 ]. Multiple reaction monitoring chromatograms of the control and sample solutions are shown in Figure 11 .…”

Modified Sijunzi decoction in the treatment of ulcerative colitis in the remission phase: study protocol for a series of N-of-1 double-blind, randomised controlled trials

“…Although there are no washout periods in this study, we considered that the carryover effects of modified SJZD have little effect in practice. The reasons are as follows: (1) the main active ingredients of SJZD are glycyrrhizic acid, glycyrrhetinic acid, pachymic acid, atractylodes lactone III, ginsenoside Re, and ginsenoside Rb 1 , and a pharmacokinetic study showed that their mean half-life is no more than 12 h [38]. For the other active ingredients of modified SJZD, further studies reported that their half-life is no more than 24 h [39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and (2) even if there are carryover effects for modified SJZD, a mixed-effect model will be used to analyse the data from the N-of-1 trials.…”