Simultaneous determination of matrine, sophoridine and oxymatrine in Sophora flavescens Ait. by high performance liquid chromatography.

Following a detailed study, a reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic method (HPLC) has been developed and validated for analysis of three bioactive alkaloids, matrine, sophoridine and oxymatrine, in Sophora flavescens Ait. HPLC separation of the alkaloids was performed on a Kromasil C(18) column and detected by ultraviolet absorbance at 208 nm. The column temperature was maintained at 40 degrees C. A mobile phase composed of 0.01 mol/L KH(2)PO(4) buffer-methanol-triethylamine in the ratios 94:6:0.01 (v/v) was found to be the most suitable for this separation at a fl ow-rate of 1.0 mL/min and enabled the baseline separation of the three analytes free from interferences with isocratic elution. The analysis time was 24 min per injection. The calibration was linear in the range of 0.2-120.0 micro g/mL for matrine, 0.2-115.2 micro g/mL for sophoridine and 0.2-110.4 micro g/mL for oxymatrine, respectively. For assaying Sophora Flavescens Ait. samples, the relative standard deviations were 2.0% for matrine, 2.8% for sophoridine and 1.8% for oxymatrine analysis. The average recoveries of matrine, sophoridine and oxymatrine were 93.9, 95.3 and 93.5% for the Sophora flavescens Ait. samples, respectively. The method has been successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of matrine, sophoridine and oxymatrine in Sophora Flavescens Ait. samples collected in different habitats. Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.