Comparison of HPLC and UPLC determination of five active components of Radix et Rhizoma Salviae Miltiorrhizae in Qishenyiqi dropping pills

Objective:To compare the established high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) and ultra-performance liquid chromatography(UPLC) method for simultaneous determination of five active compounds in Qishenyiqi dropping pills(danshensu,protocatechualdehyde,rosmarinic acid,salvianolic acid B and salvianolic acid A).Methods:A gradient HPLC system was used in the quantitative analysis of five compounds on the reversed-phase column of Agilent Zorbax SB C18(4.6 mm×250 mm,5 μm),using acetonitrile-water-formic acid as mobile phase,with a flow rate of 1.0 mL·min-1.A Waters Acquity BEH C18 column(2.1 mm×100 mm,1.7 μm) was applied,using the same mobile phase as the HPLC method,with a flow rate of 0.4 mL·min-1 in UPLC.The detective wavelength was set at 280 nm and the column temperature was 30 ℃ in both of the methods.The five active compounds were determined by HPLC and UPLC,respectively.In order to compare the two methods,the separation resolution,linearity,repeatability,recovery and the contents of the five compounds were investigated.Results:The analysis time of UPLC was obviously shorter than that of HPLC.The linear relationship between the concentration and peak areas of the five compounds were all linear(r0.9998).There were no significant difference among precision,recovery,repeatability and the contents of the two methods.Conclusion:Both of the methods show good accuracy and repeatability.Compared with HPLC,UPLC is more fast and high-performance.