Determination of Six Bioactive Compounds in Buyang Huanwu Decoction by High Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Electrospray Mass Spectrometry

Abstract A high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with an electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) method was developed for the determination of six bioactive compounds in a Buyang Huanwu decoction (BYHWD), which was composed of seven spices of Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCMs). The separations were performed on a Shim-pack (VP-ODS) C18 analytical column (5 μm, 250 × 4.6 mm ID, Shimadzu, Kyoto, Japan) with the column temperature maintained at 30°C. A linear gradient elution of A (0.1% formic acid solution) and B (100% acetonitrile) was used at a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min. The six compounds in BYHWD were identified by an Agilent-1100 HPLC system with a photodiode array detector coupled with an LC/MSD Trap SL electrospray ion mass spectrometer, and the contents of these compounds were determined by a Shimadzu 20A HPLC system coupled with a LCMS-2010EV quadrupole mass spectrometer. The standard calibration curves were linear with regression coefficient r2 > 0.99. The intra-day and inter-day precisions of this method were evaluated with the relative standard deviation values (less than 2.06% and 2.88%, respectively). The recoveries of the six investigated compounds exceeded 96%. This method was successfully used to determine the six target compounds in BYHWD. Keywords: Buyang Huanwu decoctionChinese traditional compound medicineHPLC-MS This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30873194 and 90709018) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province (2008K10-02). Notes *The concentration was expressed as (compound weight)/(total crude drugs weight), mg/g.