Simutaneous determination of glycyrrhizin and its active metabolite glycyrrhetinic acid in human plasma by LC-MS/MS
Objective To develop an LC-MS/MS method for the simutaneous determination of glycyrrhizin(GLY)and its main active metabolite glycyrrhetinic acid(GA)in human plasma.Methods Sample preparation was done by protein precipitation with methanol.Chromatographic separation was achieved by a Synergi TM 4 pm Fusion-RP 80A(2.0 mm × 50 mm,4 µm)column with a gradient mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile(containing 0.1%formic acid)-water(containing 0.1%formic acid),at a flow rate of 0.6 mL·min-1.GLY and GA were monitored using negative electrospray triple quadrupole mass spectrometer via multiple reaction monitoring(MRM)mode.The specificity,calibration curve and range,accuracy and precision,recovery,matrix effect,dilution integrity and stability were validated.Results The validated method had an excellent linearity in the range of 0.30-80.00 ng·mL-1 and 1.80-480.00 ng·mL-1 for GLY and GA,with the limits of quantification were 0.30 and 1.80 ng·mL-1.Recovery efficiencies were in the range of 98.14%-109.10%and 97.25%-100.87%for GLY and GA.No significant matrix effects were found for the two analytes.Intra-day and inter-day precisions of four quality control concentrations were less than 10.72%.Intra-day and inter-day accuracies were determined to be 95.38%-109.34%with all accuracy measurements.Conclusion The validated method was rapid,sensitive,selective and accurate for the quantification of GLY and its active metabolite GA,successfully used to the pharmacokinetics study of GLY and its active metabolite in human.
glycyrrhizinglycyrrhetinic acidliquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometrypharmacokinetics