Simultaneous Quantification of Five Compounds from Nauclea officinalis Leaves by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

A simple, rapid and validated method was developed for the simultaneous determination of five characteristic components, including three alkaloids (pumiloside, 10-hydroxy strictosamide, and strictosamide), and two flavonoids (rutin and kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside), in the Nauclea officinalis leaves. The chromatographic separation was achieved with a lichrospher C-18 analytical column by gradient elution with (A) 0.1% aqueous phosphoric acid and (B) acetonitrile as mobile phase, with a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The column temperature was set at 30 degrees C. Detection was carried out on a photodiode array detector at 226 nm. The method was validated for system suitability, precision, accuracy and linearity. The average recovery of the method was 98.00 - 100.44% and linearity (r) was>0.9993. Furthermore, the method was successfully applied to the simultaneous determination of five analytes in 10 samples of N. officinalis leaves front different harvesting time of the herb. The results suggested that the method could be efficiently employed to evaluate the quality of N. officinalis leaves from various sources, which would benefit its quality control.