Comparative metabolism of schaftoside in healthy and calcium oxalate kidney stone rats by UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS method

Schaftoside is a flavone-C-glycoside isolated from Herba Desmodii Styracifolii with valuable anti-kidney stones efficacies. In this study, a six-step strategy was first developed to detect and identify the metabolites in plasma, urine, bile, feces and rat intestinal bacteria samples of healthy and model rats administrated with schaftoside using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS/MS). The number and the relative peak area of metabolites in healthy rats and model rats were compared, and it was noticed that metabolites in bio-samples of healthy and model rats both had obvious differences. A total of 28 metabolites of schaftoside in healthy rats and 30 metabolites in model rats were initially indentified. The relative peak area of the parent drug and every metabolite in model rat plasma samples were larger than those in healthy rat plasma. Those metabolites with high blood concentrations might be beneficial for the treatment of calcium oxalate stones in the kidney. The results are valuable and important for understanding the metabolic process of schaftoside in clinical application, and especially the metabolism study in calcium oxalate kidney stone model rats could provide a beneficial reference for the further search of effective substances associated with the treatment of kidney stones.