Simultaneous determination and pharmacokinetic study of giraldoid a, giraldoid B in rat plasma after oral administration of Daphne giraldii Nitsche extracts by LC–MS/MS

A simple sensitive LC–MS/MS method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of giraldoid A and giraldoid B in rat plasma. The method was applied to pharmacokinetics studies of the two compounds from Daphne giraldii Nitsche. Chromatographic separation was accomplished on an Acquity UPLC™ BEH C 18 column (100 × 2.1 mm, 1.7 mm) by gradient elution with a flow rate of 0.2 mL min −1 . The method was linear over the concentration range of 1.0–1000 ng mL −1 , and the lower limits of quantification were 1.04 ± 0.10 and 1.04 ± 0.09 ng mL −1 , respectively. The intra‐ and inter‐day precisions (RSD) were <10.14 and 9.96%. The extraction recovery of the analytes was acceptable. Stability studies demonstrated that the two compounds were stable in the preparation and analytical process. The maximum plasma concentration was 687.78 ± 243.62 ng mL −1 for giraldoid A and 952.38 ± 131.99 ng mL −1 for giraldoid B. The time to reach the maximum plasma concentration was 0.50 ± 0.37 h for giraldoid A and 0.50 ± 0.66 h for giraldoid B. The validated method was successfully applied to investigate the concentration–time profiles of giraldoid A and giraldoid B.