A rapid, simple, and high-throughput UPLC-MS/MS method for simultaneous determination of bioactive constituents in Salvia miltiorrhiza with positive/negative ionization switching

摘要

The dried root of Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza) is a Chinese medicine that has been used in traditional treatments for more than 2000 years in Asia. It has also been used to treat cardiovascular diseases for decades. The goal of this study was to develop a new, fast, and simple ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) analytical method for the analysis of phenolic acids and tanshinones in Danshen. The samples were separated on a Kinetex F5 column (2.1 x 100 mm, 1.7 mu m, pentafluorophenyl) using 78% acetonitrile with 0.1% formic acid as the mobile phase with iso-cratic elution while the flow rate was set at 0.45 mL/min. The analysis was performed in a Waters Xevo TQ mass spectrometer via multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) in polarity switching mode. The linearity values of the calibration curves of eight compounds were in the range from 3 to 3200 ng/mL (r(2) 0.99). Method validation was performed in terms of linearity, the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the intra-day and inter-day, and it was found that precisions were within 15% and the accuracy ranged from 93% to 118%. The recovery was more than 87%. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) values of the eight analytes varied between 0.023 to 0.75 ng/mL and 0.375 to 1.5 ng/mL. respectively. This approach has the shortest analysis time for the separation of phenolic acids and tanshinones in Danshen using a UPLC core-shell column with F5 stationary phase. Meanwhile, this robust and high throughput method not only has a short run time (2 min) but also reduce the consumption of organic solvents. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.