Determination of three compounds in Aloe vera by capillary electrophoresis

A capillary electrophoretic assay for determining aloe-emodin (AE), methyl p-coumarate (MC), and 3,4-dihydro-6,8-dihydroxyl-[(3s)-2'-acetyl-3'-hydroxyl-5'-methoxy-benzyl]-isocoumarin (DDI) in Aloe vera has been developed. Baseline separation was achieved within 15 min using a running buffer of 20 mm borax containing 10% (v/v) acetonitrile at pH 10.5. A linear relationship between the peak area and the concentration of the analytes was found in the ranges 5-500, 10-1000 and 21000 mug/mL for AE, MC and DDI, respectively, with correlation coefficients of 0.9992-0.9998. The relative standard deviations of migration time and peak area were within 0.17-0.19 and 1.52-3.37%, respectively. The recoveries of AE, MC and DDI were 105, 102 and 96.4%. The contents of AE, MC and DDI in Aloe vera were measured to be 5.13, 0.768 and 1.30 mg/g, respectively. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.