Developing the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method for simultaneously quantifying five components in rat serums after oral administration of hawthorn aqueous extracts and its application to a pharmacokinetic study

Hawthorn, one of the widely-used traditional Chinese medicines, has been used to treat dyspepsia, hyperlipidemia, and cardiovascular disease in the clinic. Our previous study revealed that gallic acid, neochlorogenic acid, cryptochlorogenic acid, vitexin, and quercetin were active components of hawthorn. In this study, a simple, precise, and reliable liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method was developed for the simultaneous quantification of five components in rat serums. The separation was achieved on the Hypersil GOLD C-18 column, and the mobile phases consisted of 0.1% acetic acid water and methanol at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. The mass spectrometry data acquisition was performed on Q-Extractive-Orbitrap mass spectrometry with an electrospray ionization source in negative ion mode. The proposed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method was validated in terms of linearity, intra- and inter-precision, accuracy, recoveries, matrix effects, and stability. Then this newly proposed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study on rats after oral administration of hawthorn aqueous extracts. This study provided relevant information on the pharmacokinetics of active components of hawthorn and explained the underlying mechanism of their bioactivity.