Determination of Sophocarpine, Matrine, and Sophoridine in KUHUANG Injection by GC-MS

Abstract

A GC-MS procedure was developed to determine sophocarpine (SC), matrine (MT), and sophoridine (SRI) in KUHUANG injection. The chromatographic separation was performed on an HP-5MS column (30 m × 0.35 mm inner diameter, 0.25 µm film thickness) with helium as the carrier gas. The oven temperature was programmed from 170 to 205°C at a rate of 0.8 K/min, and n-tetracosane was used as the internal standard (IS). There was a good linear relationship between the peak area ratio of analyte to IS and the concentration of analyte in the ranges 0.0360–0.100 mg/mL for SC, 0.0461–0.346 mg/mL for MT, and 0.0473–0.355 mg/mL for SRI. The recoveries were 86.1–100.9% for SC, 87.9–104.0% for MT, and 92.5–107.2% for SRI. The interday and intraday relative standard deviations (RSDs) of determinations were less than 4.6, 2.7, and 5.1% for the assay of SC, MT, and SRI, respectively. The limits of detection (LOD) were 0.018 mg/mL for SC, 0.0231 mg/mL for MT, and 0.0287 mg/mL for SRI. The limits of quantitation (LOQ) were 0.036 mg/mL for SC, 0.0461 mg/mL for MT, and 0.0473 mg/mL for SRI. The results indicate that the developed method can be used to improve the quality control of KUHUANG injection.