Abstract
A high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the simultaneous determination of hesperidin and glycyrrhizin was established for the quality control of traditional herbal medicinal preparation, Pyungwi-san (PWS). Separation and quantification were successfully achieved with a Waters XTerra RP18 column ($5{\mu}m$, 4.6 mm I.D. ${\times}$ 150 mm) by gradient elution of a mixture of acetonitrile and water containing 0.03% phosphoric acid (pH 2.03) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The diode-array UV/vis detector (DAD) was used for the detection and the wavelength for quantification was set at 230 nm. The presence of hesperidin and glycyrrhizin in this extract was ascertained by retention time, spiking with each authentic standard and UV spectrum. All four compounds showed good linearity $(r^2>0.995)$ in a relatively wide concentration ranges. The R.S.D. for intra-day and inter-day precision was less than 7.0% and the limits of detection (LOD) were less than 60 ng. The mean recovery of each compound was 99.0-105.6% with R.S.D. values less than 4.0%. This method was successfully applied to the determination of contents of hesperidin and glycyrrhizin in three commercial products of PWS. These results suggest that the developed HPLC method is simple, effective and could be readily utilized as a quality control method for commercial PWS products.
