Qualitative and quantitative analysis of Evodiae Fructus based on the UPLC technology

Abstract

An UPLC method was developed for the studies of fingerprint and quantification of multi-components for Evodiae Fructus. The chromatographic separation was performed on a C₁₈ column (2.1 mm×50 mm,1.7 μm) with mobile phase of 0.2% formic acid-acetonitrile and 0.2% formic acid-water in gradient mode, and the detection wavelength was set at 320 nm．Dehydroevodiamine was used as the reference peak, there were 24 common peaks in the fingerprint of 29 samples were detected, and among them 10 chromatographic peaks were identified with the reference substance and they were neochlorogenic acid, chlorogenic acid, cryptochlorogenic acid, hyperin, isorhamnetin-3-O-β-D-rutinoside, dehydroevodiamine, evodiamine, rutaecarpine, evocarpine and dihydroevocarpine. The fingerprint data was evaluated with similarity evaluation system for chromatographic fingerprint of traditional Chinese medicine (Version 2008A), and the similarity of 19 batches of Evodiae Fructus was greater than 0.9 in the 29 samples. In addition, 9 components including neochlorogenic acid, chlorogenic acid, hyperin, isorhamnetin-3-O-β-D-rutinoside, dehydroevodiamine, evodiamine, rutaecarpine, evocarpine and dihydroevocarpine were simultaneously determined at the same chromatographic conditions, whose peak area integral values showed good linear relationship at the range of 0.000 46-0.138, 0.000 146-0.175, 0.000 412-0.124, 0.000 448-0.134, 0.000 452-0.136, 0.003 38-0.169, 0.000 44-0.132, 0.001 07-0.128, 0.001 71-0.128, respectively. Their average recoveries were 100.3%, 100.4%, 101.6%, 97.51%, 102.9%, 101.4%, 103.8%, 104.0%, 95.99%, and RSD were 2.4%, 2.0%, 3.0%, 0.80%, 1.9%, 2.1%, 1.1%, 2.2%, 2.4%, respectively. The established UPLC method not only realized the full separation of all chemical constituents of Evodiae Fructus within 20 minutes, but also achieved the chromatographic fingerprint determination and simultaneous multi-components determination of Evodiae Fructus at the same chromatographic conditions. Compared with other methods in literatures, the method has the following characteristics of strong specificity, good separation, high purity of chromatographic peaks, simplity and feasibility, which provides better means for the simultaneous qualitative and quantitative analysis of Evodiae Fructus.