UPLC–MS/MS simultaneous determination of seven active ingredients of Yaobitong capsule in rat plasma and its integrated pharmacokinetic application

Abstract A reliable and sensitive UPLC–MS/MS method was first established and validated for the simultaneous determination of seven active ingredients of Yaobitong capsule in rat plasma: ginsenoside Rg1, ginsenoside Rb1, osthole, tetrahydropalmatine, paeoniflorin, albiflorin, and ferulic acid. And this method was further applied for the integrated pharmacokinetic study of Yaobitong capsule in rats after oral administration. Plasma samples (100 μL) were precipitated with 300 μL of methanol using carbamazepine as internal standard. Chromatographic separation was achieved using an Aquity UPLC BEH C18 column (100 × 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm), with the mobile phase consisting of 0.1% formic acid and acetonitrile. The method was validated using a good linear relationship ( r ≥ 0.991), and the lower limit of quantification of the analytes ranged from 0.5 to 40 ng/mL. In the integrated pharmacokinetic study, the weight coefficient was calculated by the ratio of AUC 0–∞ of each component to the total AUC 0–∞ of the seven active ingredients. The integrated pharmacokinetic parameters C max , T max , and t 1/2 were 81.54 ± 9.62 ng/mL, 1.00 ± 0.21 h, and 3.26 ± 1.14 h, respectively. The integration of pharmacokinetic parameters showed a shorter t 1/2 because of fully considering the contribution of the characteristics of each active ingredient to the overall pharmacokinetics.