Simultaneous determination of six volatile components in Longhu Rendan pills using gas chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

Abstract

Longhu Rendan pills (LRPs) are one of the most widely used traditional Chinese over-the-counter medicines for the prevention and treatment of heat stroke and motion sickness. A rapid and effective GC-MS/MS method for the determination of six volatile active constituents including menthol, borneol, isoborneol, anethole, eugenol and acetyl eugenol in LRPs was developed and validated. The six compounds were separated within 8 min using a VF-WAXms capillary column, and the analytes were quantified using GC-MS/MS in multiple reaction monitoring mode. Good linearity was achieved (r > 0.9973). Variations in the intra- and inter-day precisions of all the analytes were below 4.32%, and the accuracy (92.44% to 103.64%) was evaluated using a recovery test. The method successfully determined six volatile compounds in three batches of LRP samples. The present study offers a highly accurate, sensitive and reliable method for the determination of six volatile active constituents in LRPs to promote the quality control investigation of LRPs.