UPLC-MS/MS Method for the Simultaneous Quantification of Eight Compounds in Rat Plasma and Its Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study after Oral Administration of Veratrum (Veratrum nigrum L.) Extract

Veratrum nigrum L. is a well-known traditional Chinese medicine with a lot of pharmacological activities including antihypertensive, anticancer, and antifungal effects. In the current experiment, a rapid and sensitive UPLC-MS/MS method that takes only 7 min run time has been established and validated for simultaneous determination of eight bioactive compounds including cyclopamine, jervine, veratramine, polydatin, quercetin, apigenin, resveratrol, and veratrosine in rat plasma. The chromatographic separation of analytes and internal standard was performed on a Phenyl-Hexyl column (2.1 × 100 mm, 1.7 μm) with the mobile phase consisting of water (0.1% formic acid) and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. An electrospray ionization (ESI) source was used to detect the samples in both positive and negative ion modes. The intra- and interday precisions of the compounds were less than 9.5% and the accuracy ranged from -10.8% to 10.4%. The extraction recoveries of the compounds were in the range of 85.1 ± 1.5% to 102.6 ± 8.0%, and the matrix effect ranged from 91.2 ± 4.5% to 113.8 ± 1.5%. According to the results of the stability test, the eight compounds have good stability under various conditions and the relative standard deviation (RSD) less than 13.2%. The pharmacokinetic parameters of the eight compounds in rat plasma after oral administration of Veratrum nigrum L. extract were successfully determined by the established UPLC-MS/MS method.