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, Rb1, Rb2, Rb3, Rd, Rg3, 20(S)-ginsenoside F2 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 C18 column (4.6 × 250 mm, 5 μm) 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 r2 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.