QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FATTY ACIDS FROM SNOW LOTUS (SAUSSUREA) SPECIES USING HPLC WITH FLUORESCENCE DETECTION AND ATMOSPHERIC CHEMICAL IONIZATION-MASS SPECTROMETRY

Abstract

Fatty acids (FA) are the basic and indispensable components in medicinal herbs. In the present work, a selective and sensitive method based on pre-column derivatization for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of FA from three snow lotus species (S. involucrata, S. laniceps, and S. medusa) was developed, and a comparative study based on the FA contents was carried out. FA were determined by HPLC with fluorescence detection, using 2-(12-oxobenzo[b]acridin-5(12H)-yl)-ethyl-4-toluenesulfonate (BAETS) as the labeling reagent and were identified with post-column APCI-MS. FA could be easily and quickly tagged by BAETS at 95°C in the presence of K2CO3 catalyst in N, N′-dimethylformamide (DMF). All validation procedures including linearity, limits of detection and quantification, precision, accuracy, ruggedness, and robustness were performed, and the results showed that the novel method exhibited excellent reproducibility and applicability. This proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of total fatty acids (FA) and free fatty acids (FA) from snow lotus species. The content of FA in S. laniceps was significantly lower in comparison to the other two species that had similar FA content. Furthermore, this developed method exhibited a powerful potential for accurate detection of FA from other medicinal herbs or food stuff.