HIGH PERFORMANCE LIQUID CHROMATOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE INGREDIENTS OF SCHIZANDRA

Fruetus Schizandrae, the dried fruit of Schizandra chinensis Baill, is a widely used traditional Chinese drug which recently has been used for the treatment of hepatitis. Seven pharmacologically active compounds with marked efficacy in lowering the elevated SGPT levels have been isolated from the kernels. Because of the need to evaluate the quality of the drug, a HPLC method was developed to analyze the active ingredients in the kernels.The procedure is as follows: Macerate 100mg of powdered sample with 5ml hexane. Vapourize 4 ml of supernatent hexane layer to dryness. Extract the residue repeatedly with methanol and put the methanolic extract into a 2 ml volumetric flask. After adding a certain amount of diphenyl (internal standard), make to volume with methanol.Inject 1～3μl of the methanol solution on an oetadecylsilane bonded stationary phase column (30cm×5mm i.d.). Run the chromatogram with 77% methanol as the mobile phase, using a 254 nm detector. By this procedure, the active constituents, Wuweizisu C, Wuweizisu B (γ-schizandrin), Wuweizisu A (deoxyschizandrin), Wuweiziehun B, Wuweizichun A (schizandrin), Wuweizi ester A and Wuweizi ester B, were separated successfully, except the last two compounds which behaved as one compound peak. The quantity of each compound is determined by the ratio of peak heights.Some samples obtained from various sources and other species of this genus were analyzed by this method.