UPLC-MS/MS of Atractylenolide I, Atractylenolide II, Atractylenolide III, and Atractyloside A in Rat Plasma after Oral Administration of Raw and Wheat Bran-Processed Atractylodis Rhizoma

Atractylodis Rhizoma is the dried rhizome of Atractylodes lancea (Thunb.) DC. or Atractylodes chinensis (DC.) Koidz and is often processed by stir-frying with wheat bran to reduce its dryness and increase its spleen tonifying activity. However, the mechanism by which the processing has this effect remains unknown. To explain the mechanism based on the pharmacokinetics of the active compounds, a rapid, sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method was developed to analyze atractylenolides I, II, and III, and atractyloside A simultaneously in rat plasma after oral administration of raw and processed Atractylodis Rhizoma. Acetaminophen was used as the internal standard and the plasma samples were pretreated with methanol. Positive ionization mode coupled with multiple reaction monitoring mode was used to analyze the four compounds. The method validation revealed that all the calibration curves displayed good linear regression over the concentration ranges of 3.2⁻350, 4⁻500, 4⁻500, and 3.44⁻430 ng/mL for atractylenolides I, II, and III, and atractyloside A, respectively. The relative standard deviations of the intra- and inter-day precisions of the four compounds were less than 6% with accuracies (relative error) below 2.38%, and the extraction recoveries were more than 71.90 ± 4.97%. The main pharmacokinetic parameters of the four compounds were estimated with Drug and Statistics 3.0 and the integral pharmacokinetics were determined based on an area under the curve weighting method. The results showed that the integral maximum plasma concentration and area under the curve increased after oral administration of processed Atractylodis Rhizoma.