Determination of total anthraquinone ( emodin and physcion) in Yizhikang capsule by high performance liquid chromatography

Objective: To establish a High Performance Liquid Chromatography ( HPLC) method for determining the totalanthraquinone in Yizhikang capsule.Methods: The contents of emodin and physcion were determined by a HPLC method.The emodin and physcion were separated on a Waters Sunfire C18 column ( 250 mm × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) using a mobile phase made up of methanol and 0.1% phosphoric acid solution ( 75∶ 25, v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 m L/min and detected by a UV detector at a wavelength of 254 nm.The column temperature was set at 30 ℃.Results: The response showed good linear relationship in the range of 54.09⁶49.05 μg/m L for emodin, 22.11 ~ 265.31 μg/m L for physcion with all the coefficients of correlation ( R2) =0.9999. The detection limits ( LODs) were 0.86 μg/g for emodin, 0.87 μg/g for physcion, respectively.The average recoveries of emodin and physcion were 97.20% ( RSD = 2.26%) and 99.96% ( RSD = 2.18%) , respectively. Conclusions: This method is simple, accurate, reliable and reproducible and can be used for the quality control of yizhikang capsule.