A Simple and Rapid UPLC Method for the Determination of Rosavin in Rat Plasma and Its Application to a Pharmacokinetic Study.

Rosavin is a bioactive antidepressant component isolated from Rhodiola rosea L. In this work, an ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) method was established for the determination of rosavin in rat plasma. The chromatographic separation was achieved on a HSS T3 column (100 mm × 2.1 mm, 1.8 μm) with a gradient mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and water (0.1% formic acid). Plasma samples were processed with one-step protein precipitation. Rutin was chosen as internal standard and the detection wavelength was 249 nm. The pharmacokinetic parameters were analyzed using the drug and statistics software. The results showed that the established method has an excellent linearity in the range of 10-1,000 ng/mL (R(2) = 0.992) with a lower limit of quantification (10 ng/mL). The intra- and interday precision (relative standard deviation) were from 2.0 to 10.6% and the extraction recovery was 92.4-95.1%. The simple and rapid UPLC method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic and bioavailability study of rosavin in rats.