Guizhi Fuling capsule (GFC), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with effects of
promoting blood circulation and dissipating blood stasis, has been widely used in
the clinic. Because of the complex matrix and various chemical structure types, quality
control of GFC remains great challenge. In the present study, an ultra performance
liquid chromatography hybrid triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry (UPLC-QQQ MS) method
with ultrafast positive/negative ionization switching was developed for simultaneous
determination of 18 bioactive components in GFC, including methyl gallate, ethyl gallate,
oxypaeoniflorin, benzoic acid, albiflorin, paeonolide, paeoniflorin, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6-pentagalloylglucose,
mudanpioside C, benzoyloxypaeoniflorin, benzoylpaeoniflorin, pachymic acid, amygdalin,
cinnamaldehyde, paeonol, cinnamic acid, 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, and gallic acid. Separation
was performed on an Agilent Zorbax Extend-C18 column (2.1 mm x 50 mm, 1.8 pm), using
a gradient elution with acetonitrile and water containing 0.1% formic acid. Cholic
acid was selected as the internal standard. This newly developed method was fully
validated for linearity, precision, accuracy, and stability, and then applied to quality
assessment of GFC. Finally, the batch-to-batch reproducibility of GFC samples was
evaluated by the cosine ration and Euclidean distance method, which showed high quality
consistency. The results demonstrated that the developed method provided a reasonable
and powerful manner for quality control of GFC.