A highly rapid and sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-TSQ-MS/MS) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 7 constituents from Zaoren Anshen prescription (ZAP) and 4 endogenic components in rat plasma. The proteins in the plasma samples were removed using acetonitrile. The separation of the 11 components was performed on an Alltima C18 column (150 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) with acetonitrile and 0.01% formic acid water as the mobile phase. Quantification of the 11 components was performed by multiple reaction monitoring (MRM), and the electrospray ion source polarity was switched between positive and negative modes. The method exhibited good linearity for the 11 components (R2 > 0.9942). The lower quantitative limit for the 11 components was in the range from 0.90-9.95 ng/mL. The precision was evaluated by intraday and interday assays, with all relative standard deviation (RSD)% values within 14.92%. The relative error of the accuracy ranged from -9.90 to 14.93%. The recovery ranged from 73.94 to 101.06%, and the matrix effects of the 7 components ranged from 80.06 to 105.70%. The developed method was successfully applied for correlation analysis for the simultaneous quantification of the 7 constituents from ZAP and 4 endogenic components in rat plasma after ZAP treatment.
Keywords: Zaoren Anshen prescription; correlation; pharmacokinetics; ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (UHPLC-TSQ-MS/MS).