Rapid estimation of glycyrrhizin in pharmaceutical preparations by high-speed liquid chromatography.

Abstract

The method was established to quantitate rapidly, simply and accurately by the technique of high-speed liquid chromatography, glycyrrhizin as the active ingredient of glycyrrhiza contained in kanpo (chinese medical) preparations (in the form of tablet, granule, subtle granule, powder or liquid) which are made of glycyrrhiza together with various other crude drugs. Glycyrrhizin contained in such preparations was separated in less than 11 minutes in Du Pont LC 830 with a Permaphase AAX column (50 cm×2.1 mm, i.d.) by gradient elution technique with 1/30M phosphate buffer (pH 5.2) and 0.3M NaClO4 solution as the eluants. Quantitative determination was made by this method of glycyrrhizin contained in 27 different formulae with 6 forms of preparation. For table form, a relatively satisfactory correlation was found between the glycyrrhiza extract content specified in the prescription and the glycyrrhizin content actually determined. The per cent glycyrrhizin content of preparations containing glycyrrhiza powder (2 granule and 1 powder preparation) was almost identical with the value calculated from the per cent GA content (5.00 per cent) of glycyrrhiza powder referred to in our previous report.