Rapid and Sensitive Determination of 13 Components in a Traditional Chinese Medicine Formula of Da-Huang-Gan-Cao Decoction by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry.

Da-Huang-Gan-Cao decoction (DHGCD), which is a classic formula in traditional Chinese medicine, has been clinically used for the treatment of vomiting, constipation, pancreatitis, and cholelithiasis in China and Japan. In this study, a rapid and validated method using HPLC coupled with triple quadrupole MS was developed for the simultaneous determination of 13 components in DHGCD. Separation was performed on an XBridge BEH C18 column (50 × 2.1 mm, 2.5 μm) with a gradient elution of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid in water. All calibration curves showed good linear regression (r > 0.9981) within the test range. LODs and LOQs were in the range of 1.0-20 and 2.6-69 ng/mL, respectively. The proposed method was applied for the analysis of the target compounds in 10 batches of DHGCD within a total time of 10 min. This method was conducive for the QC of DHGCD.