Abstract
An effective herbal medicinal prescription of Shengjiang Xiexin decoction (SXD) was used in treating the inflammatory bowel disease in clinic. In this study, an ultrafast liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UFLC-MS/MS) method was developed to separate and to simultaneously determine 14 major active ingredients in SXD. Chromatographic separation was successfully accomplished on an Acquity BEH C18 (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) column using gradient elution with 0.1% (v/v) formic acid water (A) and 0.1% (v/v) formic acid in methanol (B). Negative and positive electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry was used to detect the 14 analytes using its selective reaction monitoring (SRM) mode. A good linear regression relationship for each analyte was obtained over the range from 3.88 ng/mL to 4080 ng/mL. The precision was evaluated by intra- and inter-day assays with a relative standard deviation (RSD) of less than 6.25%. The recovery measured at three concentration levels varied from 98.72% to 103.47%. The overall limits of quantification (LOQ) ranged from 2.05 ng/mL to 4.72 ng/mL. The method was successfully implemented in the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the 14 chemical constituents in SXD. The results showed that the developed UFLC-MS/MS method was linear and accurate. The method could be used reliably as a quality control method for SXD.