Studies On The Metabolism Of Rosmarinic Acid From Salvia Miltiorrhiza

Salvia miltiorrhiza (Danshen in Chinese) is one of the most famous traditional Chinese medicine. Rosmarinic acid (RA) is one of the major water-soluble constituents in Danshen. In the present study, the metabolism and pharmacokinetics of RA were invesitigated.The metabolism of RA in biological fluids including simulated gastric and intestinal fluids were investigated in vitro.Meanwhile the incubation of RA in intestinal bacteria was investigated. The structures of the degradation products of RA were elucidated by HPLC-ESI-MS~n. These results provided useful references for the. internal metabolism of RA .An HPLC-MS~n method was developed for the study of the metabolites in biosamples after oral and intravenous administration of RA. The study was conducted to compare the in vivo metabolites of RA between normal rats and antibiotic-treated rats.The result indicated that the intestinal bacteria showed an important role on the absorption, metabolism and excretion of RA.To investigate the pharmacokinetics of RA in rats following single intravenous administration, the plasma concentrations of rosmarinic acid were determined by high performance liquid chromatography with ferulic acid as internal standard. The quantitation method was successfully applied to a pharmacokinetic study of RA. The pharmacokinetics parameters are obtained by using 3P97 software. And it was found to conform to a two compartments model.