ABSTRACT
Ultra high performance liquid chromatography tandem high field orbital trap mass spectrometry(UPLC-Orbitrap Elite-MS/MS) method was applied in this paper to analyze the metabolites of 4,5-dicaffeoylquinic acid in rat plasma and urine after oral administration. A gradient elution was performed by using Thermo C_(18) column(2.1 mm×100 mm, 1.9 μm), with 0.1% formic acid solution-acetonitrile as the mobile phase. Mass spectral data of biological samples were collected in negative ion mode. The data were extracted by Compound Discovery 2.1 software. Then the blank group samples and the drug samples were compared for exact molecular weight and the mass fragmentation information, and the secondary fragment fitting ratio was calculated to finally attribute the metabolites. As a result, 15 metabolites were detected in rat plasma, and 16 metabolites were detected in urine. The involving metabolic reactions included methylation, hydration, dehydration, reduction, glucuronide conjugation, and sulfation reaction. The metabolites in plasma and urine complemented each other and initially revealed the migration and excretion patterns of this compound in the body. A method for pre-processing biological samples, high-resolution LC-MS instrumentation data, and qualitative software was established in this study to identify metabolite structures, laying the foundation for the study of the active ingredients and in vivo pharmacodynamics forms of Chinese medicines.