Simultaneous determination of 14 major components in Longhu Rendan pills by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry

A novel method based on ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry was developed for the simultaneous determination of the 14 major active constituents of Longhu Rendan pills. These 14 compounds were separated within 20 min in a C18 column (2.1 mm i.d. x 100 mm, 3 mm), and good linearity was achieved (r > 0.9980). Gradient elution was applied using a mobile phase of 0.01% formic acid containing 0.2 mM ammonium formate/ acetonitrile. The analytes were quantified on an LCQ ion trap mass spectrometer in electrospray ionisation full-scan mode. Variations in the intra-and inter-day precisions of all analytes were below 4.60%, and the accuracy was evaluated by a recovery test within 94.41% to 103.39%. The method successfully quantified the 14 compounds in three sample batches of Longhu Rendan pills. Therefore, our method enables the highly accurate, sensitive and reliable determination of 14 major active constituents, which can aid the quality control investigation of Longhu Rendan pills.