title: Qualitative and quantitative determination of 15 main active constituents in Fructus Sophorae pill by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Fructus Sophorae pill, one of the traditional Chinese medicine, was widely used for hemorrhoids, hypertension and odontalgia. This paper describes a sensitive and specific assay for the determination of the 15 active constituents (sophoricoside, genistin, genistein, rutin, quercetin, kaempferol, baicalein, baicalin, naringin, naringenin, hesperidin, neohesperidin, wogonin and cimifugin, prim-O-glucosylcimifugin) in Fructus Sophorae pill.
  
  
  METHODS
  Chromatographic separation was performed on a C18 column with acidified aqueous methanol gradients at a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min. The identification and quantification of the analytes were achieved by use of a hybrid quadrupole linear ion trap mass spectrometer. Multiple-reaction monitoring scanning was applied to quantification with switching electrospray ion source polarity between positive and negative modes.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The proposed method was used to analyze 40 batches of samples with good linearity (r, 0.9990-0.9999), intraday precisions (RSD, 0.14-2.55%), interday precisions (RSD, 0.51-2.81%), stability (RSD, 0.31-2.65%), and recovery (RSD, 1.29-2.95%) of the 15 compounds. In addition, the hierarchical cluster analysis, including a method called furthest neighbor and nearest neighbor, was employed to classify samples according to characteristics of the 15 constituents.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results indicated that the analytical method was rapid, reliable, simple and suitable for the quality evaluation of Fructus Sophorae pill.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China ; Department of Pharmacy, Hebei General Hospital, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050051, PR China.
authors.forename: Xu-Ran
authors.initials: XR
authors.lastname: Zhi
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Zhi-Yong
authors.initials: ZY
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Pei-Pei
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Xu
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Sheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, School of Pharmacy, Hebei Medical University, 361 East Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, Hebei 050017, PR China.
authors.forename: Lan-Tong
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: Dosage form; Fructus Sophorae pill; HPLC-ESI-MS/MS; Hierarchical cluster analysis; Qualitative and quantitative determination