ИСТИНА

Radix scutellariae, the dried roots of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi (Lamiaceae), has been widely employed for the treatment of inflammation, pyrexia, jaundice, diarrhoea, hepatitis, etc. The activity depends on the concentration and the composition of active constituents. Baicalin and baicalein, wogonin and scutellarin as the major flavonoids of ScutellariabaicalensisGeorgi (Lamiaceae) have been investigated intensively, and shown to possess a multitude of pharmacological activities. In recent years the problem of quality control of plant material and herbal products is leading to the development of HPLC techniques with selective mass spectrometry detection for accurate measurement of these bioactive compounds as plant biomarkers. A method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of the wogonin, scutellarin, baicalin and baicalein in extracts from plant raw materials using the method of high-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry. The proposed approach was tested in the authors’ laboratory on extracts samples from Scutellariae baicalensis. For the chromatographic separation of the analytes, a reversed- phase Acclaim RSLC sorbent was used. Detection was carried out by tandem mass spectrometry with negative electrospray ionization in multiple reaction monitoring. Good linearity was observed in the range from 20 to 2000 ng/mL and achieved limits of detection were 10 ng/mL for baicalein, 1 ng/mL for baicalin and 0.5 ng/mL for wogonin and scutellarin.