Simultaneous determination of some active ingredients in anti-viral preparations of traditional Chinese medicine by micellar electrokinetic chromatography.

A simple and rapid micellar electrokinetic chromatography method was developed for the simultaneous determination of quercetin, gentiopicrin, forsythin, chlorogenic acid and caffeic acid in anti-viral preparations of traditional Chinese medicine (apTCM). In this method, the effects of buffer pH, concentration of the borax and SDS, organic modifiers, applied voltage and temperature on the separation were tested and discussed. The results showed that the fi ve analytes could be well separated within 11 min under conditions of 40 mM borax (pH 9.65) containing 20 mM SDS, 20 kV, at 25 degrees C. In the tested concentration range, regression equations revealed good linear relationships (correlation coefficients 0.9920-0.9991) between the peak areas and corresponding concentrations. In addition, a multiple linear regression QSPR model was constructed to predict the migration times of the analytes and the results were satisfactory. The method was validated by analysis of the five compounds in three representative apTCM samples with recoveries ranging from 89.2 to 106.6%. 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.