Identification of chemical constituents in SiWu decoction by UHPLC-DAD-TOF/MS

Summary An efficient and robust method for analyzing constituents of a well-known traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula SiWu decoction (SWD) contains Angelicae Sinensis Radix (ASR), Chuanxiong Rhizoma (CR), Paeoniae Radix Alba (PRA), and Rehmanniae Radix Praeparata (RRP) by ultra high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC)/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) was established. The method efficiently applied to the separation of 75 compounds, including organic acids, phthalides, phenylpropanoid glycosides, iridoid glycosides, monoterpene glycosides, and galloyl glycosides in the complex prescription, 52 compounds in this study can be unambiguously identified or tentatively characterized. The separation was achieved within 20 min at the optimized chromatographic conditions. Our study provided a reliable and high-efficient method for the understanding of the chemical basis of SWD.