Study of pharmacokinetic profiles and characteristics of active components and their metabolites in rat plasma following oral administration of the water extract of Astragali radix using UPLC–MS/MS

Astragali radix is one of the well-known traditional Chinese herbal medicine, and possesses various biological functions, such as hepatoprotective and anticancer. In present study, to investigate the metabolism and pharmacokinetics of the major constituents of A. radix, a sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method with shorter chromatographic running time was developed and...