Holistic analysis of seven active ingredients by micellar electrokinetic chromatography from three medicinal herbs composing Shuanghuanglian.

A simple and reliable method has been developed with a new strategy named holistic analysis of multiple constituents to evaluate the quality of the well-known traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Shuanghuanglian (SHL) oral liquid and soft capsule. Seven main constituents of the medicine, i.e., baicalein, baicalin, chlorogenic acid, wogonin, scutellarin, forsythin and hyperin, were selected as the evaluation markers and analyzed by micellar electrokinetic chromatography. The effects of buffer pH, concentration of electrolyte, organic modifier and applied voltage on migration behavior were studied systematically. The optimum conditions for the separation were achieved in a 12.5 mM borate-10 mM sodium dihydrogen phosphate-10 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate buffer at pH 9.1 containing 10% (v/v) acetonitrile under 15 kV. The analytes were identified by their relative time with regard to para-hydroxybenzoic acid migration time used as an internal standard. The method was validated in terms of linearity, limit of detection and quantification, precision, accuracy and recoveries. The correlation coefficient ranged from 0.9962 to 0.9992. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) were from 0.15 to 3.95 μg mL(-1). Recoveries of seven analytes in the SHL samples ranged from 89.00 to 103.04%. The proposed method was successfully applied for the quality control of complicated TCM SHL.