Determination of picroside II in dog plasma by HPLC and its application in a pharmacokinetics study

A sensitive and simple high-performance liquid chromatography method with UV detection was developed and validated for determining picroside II in dog plasma. Paeoniflorin was employed as internal standard and the sample pre-treatment procedure consists of deproteinization by addition of acetonitrile. Chromatographic separations were performed on a Shimadzu VP-ODS column (250 x 4.6 mm i.d., 5 microm). The mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile-0.1% acetic acid aqueous (v/v), 23:77, v/v, at a rate of 1 mL/min. Detection was carried out at a wavelength of 266 nm. Calibration standards ranged from 0.25 to 500 microg/mL in dog plasma and the mean correlation coefficient of 0.9981 was found for the linear calibration curves (n = 6). The limit of quantification (LOQ) was 0.25 microg/mL. Intra- and inter-assay RSD ranged from 0.70 to 7.5%. Accuracy (%bias) ranged from -6.3 to 6.0%. This method was applied to the pharmacokinetic study of picroside II in dogs. The study demonstrated the plasma picroside II concentration-time curves were fitted to the two-compartment open model and showed linear pharmacokinetics.