Comparative profiling of the absorbed compounds and metabolites, and pharmacokinetic studies of Danshen-Chuanxiong herb pair in rat plasma and brain using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Danshen-Chuanxiong (DS-CX) was a classic herb pair commonly used to treat ischemic stroke. Nevertheless, the metabolic conversion and pharmacokinetic behavior of DS-CX in vivo remains unclear. This work aimed to reveal the in vivo metabolic behavior of DS-CX through establishing metabolic profiles and performing multicomponent pharmacokinetics analysis. The mass defect filtering (MDF) strategy integrated with UHPLC-QTOF-MS was firstly developed to characterize the metabolites of DS-CX in rats’ plasma and brain. Moreover, a sensitive UHPLC-QQQ-MS method was utilized to perform the comparative pharmacokinetic studies of major active ingredients of DS-CX in rats’ plasma. A total of 111 exogenous compounds (29 prototype compounds and 82 metabolites) were identified in rat biological samples. The major metabolic pathways were hydroxylation, methylation, deoxidation, dehydration, hydrogenation, demethylation, hydrolysis, decarboxylation and glucuronidation binding reactions. According to the results of metabolites profiling, sixteen active compounds (8 phenolic acids, 5 phthalides and 3 tanshinones) were selected as markers for further comparative pharmacokinetics study. Compared with the oral administration of DS or CX alone, the higher C_max of salvianolic acid B, crytotanshinone and tanshinone IIA; the shorter T_max of lithospermic acid, rosmarinic acid and tanshinone IIA; as well as the higher AUC_0−∞ of ferulic acid, rosmarinic acid, salvianolic acid B, senkyunolide I and crytotanshinone, could be found after co-administration of DS-CX (P < 0.05). This study provided the overall knowledge of metabolites profiling of DS-CX in vivo, which would help to understand the effective material basis and promote the clinical application of DC-CX herb pair.