Simultaneous Determination of Seven Phenolic Acids, Two Flavonoids, and Tussilagone in Rat Plasma after Administration of Farfarae Flos Extract by LC–MS/MS

A simple LC-MS/MS method was established for the simultaneous quantitative analysis of concentration of seven phenolic acids, two flavonoids, and tussilagone in biological samples. The lower limit of quantitation of each target compound was less than 10 ng·mL−1. The precision of these three types of compounds was less than 15%, and all accuracy was between 85.9% and 115%. The preliminary pharmacokinetics of these three types of compounds in plasma samples were carried out using LC-MS/MS after administration of Farfarae Flos extract (3.90 and 7.80 g·kg−1) to rats, respectively. The results showed that Tmax of all ten compounds varied from 0.21 ± 0.04 h to 0.69 ± 0.19 h. Maximum concentrations and area under concentration-time curves of seven analyzed phenolic acids were higher than those of the two flavonoids and tussilagone. Terminal elimination half-life of tussilagone was the shortest among these three types of compounds. The results showed that the developed LC-MS/MS method was suitable for clarifying the pharmacokinetic characteristics of these three types of compounds in plasma after administration of Farfarae Flos extract in rats.