OBJECTIVETo establish a HPLC-based method for simultaneous determination of 2 classes of compounds (flavonoids and chromones) and 6 their effective components,(including prin-O-glucosylcimifugin, cimifugin, 4'-O-beta-D-glucosyl- 5-O-methylvisamminol, quercetin, sec-o-glucosylhamaudol and formononetin), in Yupingfeng Decoction.

METHODSHPLC-based separation of the agents was performed on Agilent Extend-C(18) column (4.6 mm x 250 mm, 5 microm) at 25 degrees with the mobile phase of MeOH-1% acetic acid water solution (gradient elution), flow rate of 0.8 ml/min and detection wavelength of 254 nm.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONHPLC allowed simultaneous quantitative determination of the 6 components in Yupingfeng Decoction, and they showed good linear relationships when their sample amount ranged 90-1810 ng, 97-1940 ng, 190-1906 ng, 105-3144 ng, 88-2625 ng and 109-3279 ng, respectively, with correlation coefficients all beyond 0.9999 and average recovery rates of 98.2%, 99.1%, 97.3%, 97.8%, 98.8% and 99.2%, respectively. This simple and convenient method accommodated a broad linear range with high sensitivity and precise and reproducible results.