A sensitive method for determination of furanodiene in rat plasma using liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry and its application to a pharmacokinetic study

Furanodiene, a sesquiterpene component extracted from the essential oil of the rhizome of Curcuma wenyujin Y.H. Chen et C. Ling (Wen Ezhu), is widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. A sensitive analytical method was established and validated for furanodiene in rat plasma, which was further applied to assess the pharmacokinetics of furanodiene in rats receiving a single dose of furanodiene. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) in multiple reaction monitoring mode was used in the method and costundide was used as internal standard. A simple protein precipitation based on methanol was employed. The simple sample cleanup increased the throughput of the method substantially. The method was validated over the range of 11000?ng/mL with a correlation coefficient >0.99. The lower limit of quantification was 1?ng/mL for furanodiene in plasma. Intra- and inter-day accuracies for furanodiene were 88-115 and 102-107%, and the inter-day precision less than 14.4%. After a single oral dose of 10?mg/kg of furanodiene, the mean peak plasma concentration of furanodiene was 66.9 +/- 23.4?ng/mL at 1?h, the area under the plasma concentrationtime curve (AUC010 h) was 220 +/- 47.8?h ng/mL, and the elimination half-life was 1.53 +/- 0.06?h. After an intravenous adminstration of furanodiene at a dosage of 5?mg/kg, the area under the plasma concentrationtime curve was 225 +/- 76.1?h.ng/mL, and the elimination half-life was 2.40 +/- 1.18?h. Based on this result, the oral bioavailability of furanodiene in rats at 10?mg/kg is 49.0%. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.