Metabolic profile of Guge Fengtong tablet in rat urine and bile after oral administration, using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

In the present study, we developed and validated a rapid analytical method using high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-Q-TOF/MS) to investigate the metabolic profile of Guge Fengtong tablet (GGFTT), a traditional Chinese medicine. The urine and bile samples were collected with 24 h after oral administration of GGFTT. A total of 34 compounds, including 11 parent compounds and 23 metabolites were unambiguously or tentatively identified. Our results indicated that glucuronidation, oxidation and methylation were the major metabolic pathways of the constituents in GGFTT. In addition, the results of this work also demonstrated the feasibility of HPLC-ESI-Q-TOF/MS for reliable characterization of the in vivo metabolites from herbal preparations.