Simultaneous chemical fingerprint and quantitative analysis of Rhizoma Smilacis Glabrae by accelerated solvent extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry

Rhizoma Smilacis Glabrae (RSG) is a well-known herbal medicine with the homology of medicine and food. In this study, simultaneous chemical fingerprint and quantitative analysis of the bioactive flavonoid components of RSG were developed using accelerated solvent extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with ion trap tandem mass spectrometry. The operational parameters of accelerated solvent extraction including extraction solvent, extraction temperature, static extraction time, solid-to-liquid ratio, and extraction cycles were optimized. Hierarchical cluster analysis, similarity analysis, and principal component analysis were performed to evaluate the similarity and variation of the samples collected from several provinces in China. Subsequently, high-performance liquid chromatography fingerprints were established for the discrimination of 16 batches of RSG samples, and the major six flavonoids, namely, toxifolin, neoastilbin, astilbin, neoisoastilbin, isoastilbin, and engeletin were then quantitatively determined. The calibration curves for all the six analytes showed good linearity (r(2) > 0.999), and the limits of detection and quantification were less than 0.10 and 0.27 mu g.mL(-1), respectively. Therefore, the proposed extraction and determination methods were proved to be robust and reliable for the quality control of RSG.