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 5-1000 ng/mL for plasma samples, 0.06-16.00 μg/g for cerebellum samples, and 0.03-8.00 μg/g for other tissue samples. The limit of quantification (LOQ) for AO-I was 1.0 ng/mL or 1.0 ng/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 μg/mL, AUC = 1.95 ± 0.30 μg h/mL and k_a = 10.08 ± 5.60 h^-1. The tissue distribution of AO-I in rats after the oral administration of 50.0 mg/kg was from 0.225 to 0.031 μg/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.