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The chemical fingerprint and metabolic profile of traditional Chinese medicine is very complicated and has been a great challenge. In the present study, chemical fingerprint of ethyl acetate fraction of Gastrodia elata (EtAcGE) and metabolic profile of rat plasma sample after intragastric administration of EtAcGE (2.5 g/kg) were investigated using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole-time of flight mass spectrometry (UPLC/Q-TOF MS). A total of 38 chemical constituents of EtAcGE were identified by comparing their retention time, accurate molecular mass and characteristic fragment ions with those of references, or tentatively characterized by comparing molecular formula, fragment ions with that of known compound or information available in literature. And 40 compounds were detected in dosed rat plasma sample, including 16 prototypes and 24 metabolites underwent metabolic process of glucuronidation, glucosylation, sulfation, methylation, hydroxylation, dehydrogenation or mixed modes. The metabolic “soft spots” was hydroxyl or carboxy group. This is the first research for chemical fingerprint and metabolic profile of EtAcGE, which lay a foundation for the further investigation of EtAcGE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple, rapid and sensitive ultra high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (UHPLC-FLD) method was developed and validated for quantification of parishin and its metabolites in rats. Plasma samples were prepared by protein precipitation and then analyzed using UHPLC-FLD system. Repeated optimization showed that parishin and its metabolites, including gastrodin, p-hydroxybenzyl alcohol, parishin B and parishin C, could be sensitively detected based on the autofluorescence when excitation and emission wavelengths were set at 225 nm and 295 nm, respectively. The limit of detections (LODs) of GAS, HBA, PB, PC and PA reached 0.6, 0.8, 1, 1 and 1 ng/mL, respectively. The linearity for all targets was within the range 2.5–5000 ng/mL and the correlation coefficient ( r 2 ) was larger than 0.999. Importantly, our method was almost free from matrix effects and the recoveries were higher than 80%. Additionally, our method also had high precision and accuracy for all analytes, presenting RSDs and REs within ±6% and ±14%, respectively. Finally, the validated UHPLC-FLD method was successfully applied for studying the pharmacokinetics of parishin following intragastrically administration in rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]