A Validated Liquid Chromatographic Method for Berberine Analysis in Tissue and Application

Simple and rapid high-performance liquid chromatography methods were developed for the determination of berberine (BB) in various rat tissues so as to evaluate a P-gp inhibitor, glycyrrhetinic acid (GA), on BB’s oral bioavailability. Acetonitrile was used to extract BB from tissues and showed different extraction recoveries in diverse tissues. The intra- and interday precision and accuracy were less than 10%. Long-term stability, pre (post) -preparative stability, and freeze-thaw stability were evaluated, and the results showed it could meet the need of this study. The proposed methods were subsequently applied to investigate the possible drug-drug interaction of GA and BB in vivo from the aspect of tissue distribution. The results showed that no significant difference was found between the group of low dose and high dose at the same time point. The tissue distributions show a saturated model, i.e., the content of BB in tissue tends to be constant while its dose is more than 200 mg/kg. Besides, the contents of BB ranged from high to low according to the order of the liver, kidney, and spleen. The BB content in the liver is especially high as compared to other tissues.