SIMULTANEOUS QUANTIFICATION OF ELEVEN CHEMICAL COMPONENTS IN TRADITIONAL HERBAL MEDICINAL FORMULA SOCHEONGRYONGTANG BY HPLC-DAD AND LC-MS

Abstract

Sochengryongtang (SCRT), a traditional herbal medicine, has been used for the treatment of cold for thousands of years. In this study, high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was applied for the reliable and sensitive simultaneous analysis of 11 major components (homogentisic acid, ephedrine HCl, paeoniflorin, cinnamic acid, cinnamaldehyde, glycyrrhizin, 6-gingerol, schisandrin, methyl engenol, gomisin A, and gomisin N) in SCRT. Components were separated on a C18 column using gradient elution with 0.1% TFA water and acetonitrile and characterized based on the retention time in HPLC chromatogram, UV spectrum, and MS data. All calibration curves of major components proved to have good linearity (r2 > 0.9999). The LOQ and LOD ranged from 7.7 to 47.8 ng/mL and 23.5 to 131.2 ng/mL, respectively. This developed method showed good precision and accuracy with intra-day and inter-day (relative standard deviation, R.S.D.) values were less than 1.93% and 1.74%, respectively. The overall recoveries ranged from 92.42% to 107.87% with the R.S.D. ranging from 0.01% to 1.87%. The established method was successfully applied for the simultaneous determination of 11 components in SCRT.