Plasma pharmacochemistry based approach to screening potential bioactive components in Huang-Lian-Jie-Du-Tang using high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometric detection

Ethnopharmacological relevance: Huang-Lian-Jie-Du-Tang (HLJDT), a classic prescription of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), has been used in clinical over 1700 years for the treatment of gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer disease. But the active components of HLJDT were ambiguous, which seriously restricted its clinical application. Materials and methods: The methodology of plasma pharmacochemistry was applied to screen the bioactive components in HLJDT. A reliable LC/MS system was established for detecting the prototype compounds and metabolites in dosed plasma after oral administration of HLJDT. By comparative analysis of the chemical profiles of HLJDT extracts, blank plasma and dosed plasma, potential bioactive compounds in HLJDT may be discovered. Results: By comparing the retention time, MS and MS/MS spectra with those of reference standard and literature data, 30 components including 22 prototype compounds and 8 metabolites from HLJDT were discovered as potential bioactive components in rat plasma. Conclusions: A reliable and effective method was established to screen the potential bioactive components in the formula of HLJDT, which provided useful information for the further study of action mechanism of HLJDT. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.