HPLC determination of five polyphenols in rat plasma after intravenous administration of hawthorn leaves extract and its application to pharmacokinetic study

A simple and specific HPLC-UV method was developed to simultaneously determine five active compounds including vitexin-4"-O-glucoside (VG), vitexin-2"-O-rhamnoside (VR), vitexin (VIT), rutin (RUT) and hyperoside (HP) in rat plasma after intravenous administrating the hawthorn leaves extract (HLE). With baicalin as internal standard (I.S.), sample pretreatment involved a one-step extraction with methanol of 0.2 ml plasma. The HPLC assay was carried out using a Phenomsil C18 analytical column with UV detection at 332 nm. The mobile phase consisted of methanol-acetonitrile-tetrahydrofuran-1% glacial acetic acid (6:1.5:18.5:74, v/v/v/v). The calibration curves were liner over the range of 2.030-500.5, 0.1513-75.64, 0.2507-12.54, 0.5128-25.64 and 0.4032-20.16 μg/ml for VG, VR, VIT, RUT and HP, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSD) of the intra- and inter-day precisions for the analysis of the five analytes were between 1.0 and 8.9% with accuracies (relative error) below 8.2% for the analysis of the five analytes. The average extraction recoveries of five analytes were more than 82.67 ± 4.74%. The HPLC method herein described was fully validated and successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic studies after intravenous administration of HLE solution to rats over three doses.