Determination of the Active Components in Chinese Herb Cortex Moutan by MEKC and LC

Abstract

Cortex Moutan is one important traditional Chinese herb used in many traditional prescriptions. Paeonol (PN) and paeoniflorin (PF) are two active components contained in Cortex Moutan. In the present work, micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MEKC) was applied to the determination of these active components in Cortex Moutan, and the analytical results were compared with that obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The optimized buffer system containing 10 mM borate and 25 mM SDS at pH 9.5 was employed in MEKC analysis and the linearities between peak areas and the concentrations of the analytes were investigated. The excellent linear behavior was exhibited over the investigated concentration ranges (R2: 0.9945 for PN and 0.9992 for PF in MEKC, while 0.9993 for PN and 0.9998 for PF in HPLC). The recoveries of the developed MEKC method ranged 97.1–104.4% for PN and 95.3–103.2% for PF, respectively. It was shown that no significant difference was found in the analysis of Cortex Moutan by the developed MEKC and HPLC methods.