Quantitative determination of four diterpenoids in radix salviae miltiorrhizae using LC-MS-MS

An HPLC-ESI-MS-MS method has been developed for the quantitative determination of four diterpenoids, dihydrotanshinone I, cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I, and tanshinone IIA in Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae (RSM, the root of Salvia miltiorrhiza B-GE.). The diterpenoids were chromatographically separated on a C18 HPLC column, and the quantification of these diterpenoids was based on the fragments of [M+H](+) under collision-activated conditions and in Selected Reaction Monitioring (SRM) mode. The quantitative method was validated, and the mean recovery rates from fortified samples (n=5) of dihydrotanshinone I, cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I, and tanshinone IIA were 95.0%, 97.2%, 93.1 %, and 95.9% with variation coefficient of 6.0%, 4.3%, 3.7%, and 4.2%, respectively. The established method was successfully applied to the quality assessment of seven batches of RSM samples collected from different regions of China.