Quantitative and pattern recognition analyses for the quality evaluation of herba epimedii by HPLC

In this study, quantitative and pattern recognition analyses for the quality evaluation of Herba Epimedii using HPLC was developed. For quantitative analysis, five major bioactive constituents, hyperin, epimedin A, epimedin B, epimedin C, and icariin were determined. Analysis was carried out on Capcell pak C₁₈ column (250×4.6 mm, 5 μm) with a mobile phase of mixture of acetonitrile and 0.1% formic acid, using UV detection at 270 nm. The linear behavior was observed over the investigated concentration range (2-50 μg/mL; r² > 0.99) for all analytes. The intra and inter-day precisions were lower than 4.3% (as a relative standard deviation, RSD) and accuracies between 95.1% and 104.4%. The HPLC analytical method for pattern recognition analysis was validated by repeated analysis of one reference sample. The RSD of intra- and inter-day variation of relative retention time (RRT) and relative peak area (RPA) of the 12 selected common peaks were below 0.8% and 4.7%, respectively. The developed methods were applied to analysis of twenty Herba Epimedii extract samples. Contents of hyperin, epimedin A, epimedin B, epimedin C, and icariin were calculated to be 0~0.79, 0.69~1.91, 0.93~9.58, 0.65~3.05, and 2.43~11.8 mg/g dried plant. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that most samples were clustered together with the reference samples but several apart from the main cluster in the PC score plot, indicating differences in overall chemical composition between two clusters. The present study suggests that quantitative determination of marker compounds combined with pattern-recognition method can provide a comprehensive approach for the quality assessment of herbal medicines.