Simultaneous determination of 10 active components in Baizhu Shaoyao San and its single herbs by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection.

Baizhu Shaoyao San (BSS) is a famous traditional Chinese medicinal prescription, which is composed of Rhizome atractylodis macrocephalae, Radix Paeoniae Alba, Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae and Radix Saposhnikovia. In this study, a simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection method was established for the simultaneous determination of 10 marker compounds including atractylenolide I, gallic acid, albiflorin, paeoniflorin, narirutin, hesperidin, nobiletin, cimifugin, prim-O-glucosylcimifugin, 4'-O-β-d-glucosyl-5-O-methylvismminol in BSS and its single herbs. The chromatographic separation was performed using a YMC C18 column with a gradient elution system of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid aqueous solution at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. The results demonstrated that the validated method was simple, reliable and successfully applied to evaluate the selected compounds in BSS and its single herbs for quality control. Moreover, the experimental data showed that the contents of two major active components detected in BSS decoction were significantly higher than those in the single herbs, which indicated that the combination of single herbs could result in the difference in the amount of active constituents.