A capillary gas chromatography-selected ion monitoring mass spectrometry method for the analysis of atractylenolide I in rat plasma and tissues, and application in a pharmacokinetic study

The aim of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of atractylenolide I (AO-I) in the body by a GC-MS method. All bio-samples were cleared up with a liquid-liquid extraction procedure. The calibration curves were linear within a range of 5-1000ng/mL for plasma samples, 0.06-16.00 mu g/g for cerebellum samples, and 0.03-8.00 mu g/g for other tissue samples. The limit of quantification (LOQ) for AO-I was 1.0ng/mL or 1.0ng/g (S/N >= 10) in the bio-samples. In the applications, the main pharmacokinetic parameters were firstly obtained as follows: T-max = 0.37 +/- 0.19 h, C-max = 0.26 +/- 0.05 mu g/mL, AUC = 1.95 +/- 0.30 mu g h/mL and k(a) = 10.08 +/- 5.60 h(-1). The tissue distribution of AO-I in rats after the oral administration of 50.0mg/kg was from 0.225 to 0.031 mu g/g with a decreasing tendency in different tissues like liver > kidney > spleen > cerebellum > heart > cerebrum > lung. The protein binding in rat plasma, human plasma and bovine serum albumin was 80.8 +/- 3.9, 90.6 +/- 3. 1 and 60.9 +/- 5. 1 %, respectively. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.