Simultaneous determination of paeoniflorin, albiflorin and benzoylpaeoniflorin in Radix Paeoniae Alba by TLC

Paeoniflorin, albiflorin and benzoylpaeoniflorin are three representative monoterpene glycosides in Radix Paeoniae Alba, a well-known traditional Chinese medicine with a great important biological activity. In the present paper, the three marker compounds were simultaneously quantified by TLC densitometric methods using high performance thin layer chromatography. The established method was validated in terms of LOD/LOQ, linearity, recovery and repeatability. The method was found to be precise with RSDs for intra-day in the range of 0.78-1.05, 0.67-0.98, 0.93-1.42% and for inter-day in the range of 0.85-1.23, 0.98-1.29, 1.28-1.94% for different concentrations of albiflorin, paeoniflorin and benzoylpaeoniflorin. Instrumental precision was 0.36, 0.41 and 0.45 (% RSD) for albiflorin, paeoniflorin and benzoylpaeoniflorin. Recoveries of abliflorinl, paeoniflorin and benzoylpaeoniflor were 98, 101.95 and 96.25%, respectively. The proposed method is simple, precise, specific, sensitive, and accurate and can be used for routine quality control of the crude drug.