Quantitative Determination of Eight Major Constituents in the Traditional Chinese Medicinal Yi-Qi-Fu-Mai Preparation by LC

A high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of eight marker components, ginsenoside Rf, Rb-1, Rb-2, Rb-3, Rd, Rg(3), 20(S)-ginsenoside F-2 and schizandrin, present in traditional Chinese medicinal Yi-Qi-Fu-Mai preparations. Samples were prepared using a solid phase extraction procedure. Chromatographic separation was carried out on a Waters Symmetry C-18 column (4.6 x 250 mm, 5 mu m) by stepwise gradient elution with water (0.05% phosphoric acid, v/v) and acetonitrile as the mobile phase. Good linear relationships between were observed between peak areas and concentrations with r (2) values above 0.9990 for all the analytes. Average recoveries for the eight markers ranged from 97.7 to 100.4%. This method was found to be rapid, sensitive, accurate, and could be readily applied to the quality assessment of Yi-Qi-Fu-Mai preparations.