Simultaneous determination of ten active components in traditional Chinese medicinal products containing both Gegen (Pueraria lobata) and Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza) by high-performance liquid chromatography

In order to facilitate the quality control of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) products containing both Gegen (Pueraria lobata) and Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza), a new and simple HPLC method for the simultaneous determination of 10 active components in these products has been developed. The chromatographic separation was carried out on a C(18) column eluted with a mobile phase consisting of 0.1% acetic acid in water and 0.1% acetic acid in acetonitrile with gradient elution. The eluent was monitored by a photodiode array UV detector at a wavelength of 250 nm for Gegen components including puerarin, daidzein 8-C-apiosyl-glucoside, daidzin and daidzein, and at 270 nm for Danshen components including danshensu, protocatechuic aldehyde, salvianolic acid B, cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and tanshinone IIa. Excellent chromatographic separation was achieved for all studied compounds with good linearity (r(2)> 0.999) over the studied concentration ranges. The developed method has been applied to the simultaneous determination of the 10 studied compounds in commercially available products containing both Gegen and Danshen. The TCM product samples were extracted by sonication with a mixture of methanol:water (80:20) containing 0.5% acetic acid. Extraction recoveries for all studied compounds were in the range of 96.01-106.18%. The intra-day and inter-day variations were less than 7.25 and 5.44%, respectively, for all studied compounds. The developed method has not only proved to be effective in the simultaneous determination of the 10 components, but also provides a convenient quality control approach for TCM products containing both Gegen and Danshen.