Simultaneous determination of chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, alantolactone and isoalantolactone in Inula helenium by HPLC.

A rapid and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method was developed for the simultaneous separation and determination of chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, alantolactone and isoalantolactone in Inula helenium. The HPLC separation was performed on an Elite Hypersil C18 column (200 × 4.6 mm i.d., 5 µm particle size) with a gradient elution of solvent A (acetonitrile) and solvent B (0.1% phosphoric acid in water) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. Detection was monitored at 225 nm. The recovery of chlorogenic acid ranged from 95.6 to 107.7%, the recovery of caffeic acid ranged from 95.4 to 104.2%, the recovery of alantolactone ranged from 95.8 to 100.8% and the recovery of isoalantolactone ranged from 96.5 to 102.3%. The retention times for chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, alantolactone and isoalantolactone were 5.2, 7.1, 25.6 and 26.6 min with the limits of detection of 0.069, 0.021, 0.039 and 0.051 µg/mL, respectively. Relative standard deviation for the intra-day and inter-day was ≤2.5%. The validated method is reliable for the routine control of these four compounds in I. helenium.