HPLC determination and pharmacokinetics of chlorogenic acid in rabbit plasma after an oral dose of Flos Lonicerae extract.

A simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method has been developed for the determination of chlorogenic acid (3-O-caffeoyl-D-quinic acid) in plasma and applied to its pharmacokinetic study in rabbits after administration of Flos Lonicerae extract. Plasma samples are extracted with methanol. HPLC analysis of the extracts is performed on a C(18) reversed-phase column using acetonitrile-0.2% phosphate buffer (11:89, v/v) as the mobile phase. The UV detector is set at 327 nm. The standard curves are linear in the range 0.0500-1.00 microg/mL (r = 0.9987). The mean extraction recovery of 85.1% is obtained for chlorogenic acid. The interday precision (relative standard deviation) ranges from 5.0% to 7.5%, and the intraday precision is better than 9.0%. The limit of quantitation is 0.0500 microg/mL. The plasma concentration of chlorogenic acid shows a C(max) of 0.839 +/- 0.35 microg/mL at 34.7 +/- 1.1 min and a second one of 0.367 +/- 0.16 microg/mL at 273.4 +/- 39.6 min.