2.15 Pharmacokinetic study
All animal experimental protocols were carried out strictly in
accordance with the principles and procedures approved by the Animal
Ethics Committee of Northwest A&F University. Animal studies are
reported in compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines (Kilkenny, Browne,
Cuthill, Emerson, & Altman, 2010; McGrath & Lilley, 2015) and with the
recommendations made by the British Journal of Pharmacology . Male
Sprague-Dawley rats (200-220 g) were purchased from
Sino-British Sippr/BK Laboratory Animal Ltd. (Shanghai, China). Rats
were fasted but allowed free access to water for 12 h prior to the
pharmacokinetic study. The rats were randomized into two groups for
intravenous or intraperitoneal injection, the dosages of which were set
at 20 and 40 mg/kg, respectively. Each group contained five or six rats.
Blood samples were collected from the orbital plexus into heparinized
centrifuge tubes at 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 120, 240, 360, 720, and 1440 min
after the administration. Then the whole blood was centrifuged at 4000 ×
g for 10 min at 4 °C. The obtained plasma was frozen and stored at -80
°C until further analysis. Pharmacokinetic parameters were calculated by
WinNonlin software (Pharsight Corporation, Princeton, NJ, USA) based on
non-compartmental method. Mean plasma concentration-time curves of TA in
rats were plotted by GraphPad Prism 5 (GraphPad software Inc., CA, USA).