Quantitative determination of bioactive compounds in some Artemisia capillaris by high-performance liquid chromatography.

In order to facilitate the quality control of Artemisia capillaris, a simple, accurate and reliable HPLC method was developed for the simultaneous determination of the six bioactive compounds: scopolin (1), chlorogenic acid (2), 2,4-dihydroxy-6-methoxyacetophenone 4-glycoside (3), hyperoside (4), isorhamnetin 3-Orobinobioside (5), and scoparone (6), which were selected as the chemical markers of A. capillaris. Separation was achieved on an Agilent Eclipse XDB-C18 column with a gradient solvent system of 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid aqueous-acetonitrile at a flow-rate of 1.0 mL/min and detected at 254 nm. All six calibration curves showed good linearity (R2>0.998). A simple reversed phase HPLC method was developed for extracting pharmacologically active compounds scopolin, chlorogenic acid, 2,4-dihydroxy-6-methoxyacetophenone 4-glycoside, hyperoside, isorhamnetin 3-O-robinobioside, and scoparone from A. capillaris using a binary gradient of acetonitrile: 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid with UV detection at 254 nm. The scopolin (1), chlorogenic acid (2), 2,4-dihydroxy-6-methoxyacetophenone 4-glycoside (3), hyperoside (4), isorhamnetin 3-O-robinobioside (5), and scoparone (6) contents of the herb of A. capillaris collected from fifteen district markets in Korea were 0.00~0.90 mg/g, 0.06~7.29 mg/g, 0.06~0.91 mg/g, 0.07~5.05 mg/g, 0.42~13.11 mg/g, and 1.11~29.82 mg/g, respectively. The results demonstrated that this method is simple and reliable for the quality control of A. capillaris.