Chemical fingerprinting of Shexiang Baoxin Pill and simultaneous determination of its major constituents by HPLC with evaporative light scattering detection and electrospray mass spectrometric detection.

High-performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with evaporative light scattered detection (ELSD) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometric detection (ESI-MS) was employed to establish chemical fingerprint of Shexiang Baoxin Pill (SBP) and to simultaneously determinate its seven major constituents, including cholic acid, deoxycholic acid, ursodeoxycholic acid, chenodeoxycholic acid, cinobufagin, recibufogenin, and ginsenoside Rb1. The analysis was performed on a C18 column with water-acetonitrile gradient elution, and the investigated constituents were authenticated by comparing their retention times and mass spectra with those of reference compounds. The proposed method was applied to analyze nine SBP samples and produced data with acceptable linearity, precision, stability and accuracy. Both the chemical fingerprints and quantification data were used to evaluate the quality of various SBP products. The proposed method allows obtaining chemical fingerprint and quantification of multi-components in one run, and therefore can be readily utilized as a comprehensive quality control approach for traditional Chinese medicine.