Quantitative Analysis of Bioactive Components in Chinese Herb Medicine by HPLC

Resumen

Dao-Chi San (DCS) is one of the famous anti-inflammatory Chinese medicinal
prescriptions for urinary infection. Of the 4 component drugs, Glycyrrhizae Radix and
Crude Rehmanniae Radix are the main anti-inflammatory drugs in DCS. Glycyrrhizin
and catalpol are the principle components of the prescription, respectively. A high
performance liquid chromatographic method for the determination of catalpol and
glycyrrhizin in DCS was established. The separation for catalpol was performed on a
LiChrospher 100 RP-18e column with 0.6% CH3CN as the mobile phase at a flow rate
of 1.0 ml/min, with detection at 210 nm. Analysis for glycyrrhizin was performed on an
RP-18e column with CH3CN- 0.2% acetic acid (35:65) as the mobile phase, at a flow
rate of 1.0 ml/min and detection at 254 nm. The retention times of catalpol and
glycyrrhizin were 10.6 min and 18.6 min, respectively. A good linear relationship was
obtained in the concentration range studied, and the method was sufficiently accurate
and precise for use in quality control of traditional Chinese medicinal prescriptions.
Thus, we quantitatively analyzed the two principle anti-inflammatory constituents of
standard decoction and three concentrated DCS products from the Chinese medicinal
pharmaceutical industries. The results show that market concentrations of DCS contain
catalpol in the range of 15.84~20.88 (mg/daily dose) and glycyrrhizin in the range of
124.02~146.34 (mg/daily dose). Comparison of the contents of the marker s ubstances in
commercial preparations shows that they are variable. In order to promote safety, and
reproducible efficacious use in Chinese medicinal preparations, our aim was to develop
simple and expedient analytical methods for routine quality control in the
pharmaceutical industry