Determination of Lactone Components in Chuanxiong by Reversed-Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography

A reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method was developed for the simultaneous determination of four main lactone components including senkyunolide-H, senkyunolide-I, sedanenolide and Z-ligustilide in Chuanxiong, a Chinese herbal medicine. The samples were pretreated (using) ultrasonic extraction, and 80% ethanol was used as extractant in the experiment. The chromatographic analysis was carried out using an XDB-C_8 column and the mobile phase consisted of methanol-1%(volume fraction) acetic acid water (5545→1000, (v/v,) in 15 min). The flow rate was 0.8 mL/min. A diode array detector was used to detect the compositions and 280 nm was chosen as the detection wavelength. The whole process could be performed within 15 min. The operating curves were found to be linear over the ranges of 0.4-2.2 mg/L (r=(0.9992)), 0.4-2.2 mg/L (r=(0.9979)), 2.6-7.8 mg/L (r=(0.9992)) and 4.8-14.3 mg/L (r=(0.9998)) and the detection limits (S/N=3) were 0.024, 0.027, 0.018 and 0.011 μg for senkyunolide-H, senkyunolide-I, sedanenolide and Z-ligustilide, respectively. The recoveries of the four lactone components were found in the range of 96%-108%. The rapid and accurate method has been successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of the four lactone components in Chuanxiong.