Simultaneous quantification of three alkaloids of Coptidis Rhizoma in rat urine by high-performance liquid chromatography: application to pharmacokinetic study.

A high-performance liquid chromatographic method with ultraviolet detection was established and validated for quantification of three alkaloids (coptisine, palmatine and berberine) in rat urine. Following a single-step liquid-liquid extraction, the analytes were separated on a reversed-phase C(18) column with water-formic acid-triethylamine-methanol as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 1 ml/min. The linear ranges of the calibration curves were 1.6-160 ng/ml for all three alkaloids. The lower limit of quantification was 1.6 ng/ml for all three alkaloids. The within-batch accuracy was 90.4-108.3% for coptisine, 88.6-107.8% for berberine and 88.4-110.1% for palmatine. The between-batch accuracy was 99.3-100.3% for coptisine, 94.3-100.6% for berberine and 93.7-100.0% for palmatine. The within-batch and between-batch precisions were <or=10.1% and <or=11.1%, respectively. This method is suitable to determine the three alkaloids of Coptidis Rhizoma in urine simultaneously and thus to investigate the pharmacokinetics of the alkaloids from Xiexin Decoction in rats. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.