Development and Validation of an HPLC Method for Simultaneous Determination of Nine Active Components in ‘Da-Chai-Hu-Tang’

In this study, a simple, reliable and accurate method for the simultaneous separation and determination of naringin, hesperidin, neohesperidin, baicalin, wogonoside, baicalein, wogonin, emodin and chrysophanol in ‘Da-Chai-Hu-Tang’ was developed by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). The chromatographic separation was performed on an Agilent ZORBAX C18 column (250 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., 5.0 μm), and the mobile phase composed of methanol and water containing 1% (v/v) acetic acid was used to elute the targets in a gradient elution mode. The flow rate and detection wavelength were set at 0.8 ml/min and 280 nm, respectively. All calibration curves of the nine components expressed good linearities (r2 ≥ 0.9992) within the tested ranges. The RSD values demonstrated the intraand inter-day precisions were less than 2.89%, and the recoveries of the investigated compounds were between 96.22% and 105.28%. The proposed method is simple, precise, specific, sensitive, and successfully applied to determine the nine marker compounds in ‘Da-Chai-Hu-Tang’ for quality control.