Simultaneous determination of atropine, scopolamine, and anisodamine from Hyoscyamus niger L. in rat plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry and its application to a pharmacokinetics study.

In order to investigate the pharmacokinetics of tropane alkaloids in Hyoscyamus niger L., a sensitive and specific high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous determination of atropine, scopolamine, and anisodamine in rat plasma is developed and fully validated, using homatropine as an internal standard. The separation of the four compounds was carried out on a BDS Hypersil C18 column using a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and water (containing 10 mmol ammonium acetate). Calibration curves were linear from 0.2 to 40 ng/mL for atropine, scopolamine, and from 0.08 to 20 ng/mL for anisodamine. The precision of three analytes was <5.89% and the accuracy was between -1.04 to 2.94%. This method is successfully applied to rat pharmacokinetics analysis of the three tropane alkaloids after oral administration of H. niger extract. The maximum concentration of these three tropane alkaloids was reached within 15 min, and the maximum concentrations were 31.36 ± 7.35 ng/mL for atropine, 49.94 ± 2.67 ng/mL for scopolamine, and 2.83 ± 1.49 ng/mL for anisodamine. The pharmacokinetic parameters revealed areas under the curve of 22.76 ± 5.80, 16.80 ± 3.08, and 4.31 ± 1.21 ng/h mL and mean residence times of 2.08 ± 0.55, 1.19 ± 0.45, and 3.28 ± 0.78 h for atropine, scopolamine, and anisodamine, respectively.

Determination of potato glycoalkaloids and their aglycone in blood serum by high-performance liquid chromatography. Application to pharmacokinetic studies in humans.

The development of a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the separation and quantification of potato glycoalkaloids and their aglycone solanidine in blood serum is reported. High selectivity was obtained by using solid-phase extraction followed by off-line dual-column HPLC. Injections were made via a sample enrichment column to achieve maximum sensitivity in the assay. The potato alkaloids in the HPLC effluents were detected by ultraviolet absorption at 200 nm. The detection limits were estimated to be 0.3 ng/ml of serum for each of the alkaloids. The method was used to study the pharmacokinetics of potato glycoalkaloids in humans. alpha-Solanine and alpha-chaconine were detected in all blood serum samples collected from seven volunteers 1-25 h after a meal of potatoes. Solanidine was detected in some samples, but there were no traces of the mono- or diglycosides. The average apparent biological half-lives for alpha-solanine and alpha-chaconine were 11 and 19 h, respectively.