Isolation and identification of degradation products of salvianolic acid A by NMR and LC-MS.

Salvianolic acid A was subjected to thermal degradation condition in distilled water at 90 °C. Four degradation products, including two novel compounds (1, 2) and two known ones (5, 6), were isolated by reverse-phase semi-preparative liquid chromatography and identified on the basis of NMR and MS data. Other two degradation products (3, 4) were determined by LC-MS analysis.