Rapid analysis of Saposhnikovia divaricate decoction metabolism in rats by UHPLC-Q-TOFMS and multivariate statistical analysis.

Saposhnikovia divaricata (SD) is a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in treating various diseases such as pyrexia, rheumatism and headache, et al. So far, there have been few reports on the metabolism of orally administered Saposhnikovia divaricate decoction (SDD), hindering further study on bioactive components and their pharmacological research. In the present study, ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-Q-TOFMS) was used coupled with principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squared discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) to rapidly discover and identify the metabolites of SDD. According to the result of PLS-DA, a total of 139 interest ions including 87 positive ions and 52 negative ions were extracted as SDD-related xenobiotics in urine. Finally, 12 and 65 compounds were identified as absorbed parent components and metabolites of SDD respectively. Among them, 40 new metabolites were reported for the first time. Our results suggested that hydrolysis, hydroxylation, glucuronidation and sulfation were the major metabolic pathways of chromones, while hydroxylation, hydrogenation and sulfation were the main metabolic pathways of coumarins. This study is the first to explore the absorption and metabolism of SDD using UHPLC-Q-TOFMS, with results providing a basis for further studying the pharmacokinetics and discovering the bioactive components of SDD.