title: High-performance liquid chromatographic determination of tanshinones in the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and related traditional chinese medicinal preparations.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  This paper describes a validated high-performance liquid chromatographic method to quantitate four tanshinones as markers; dihydrotanshinone I, cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and tanshinone IIA for use in the quality control of the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and its related traditional Chinese medicinal preparations.
  
  
  METHODS
  Separation was achieved using a Zorbax Extend C18 reserved-phase column (5microm, 250*4.6mm) at 20 degrees with a gradient mixture of deionized water and acetonitrile at a flow rate of 1.2ml/min.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The limits of quantitation were 0.13, 0.08, 0.06 and 0.05microg/ml for dihydrotanshinone I, cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and tanshinone IIA, respectively. This method provided good reproducibility and sensitivity for the quantification of four tanshinones with overall RSD values for intra-day and inter-day precision and accuracy better than 3.8% and higher than 94.9%, respectively. The recovery of the method was 95.4-104.4% for all the tanshinones and showed good linearity (r>0.9998) over a relatively wide concentration range.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This assay was successfully applied to the determination of four tanshinones in the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and its related traditional Chinese medicinal preparations. The results indicated that the HPLC assay could be readily utilized as a quality control method for the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and its related traditional Chinese medicinal preparations.
authors.affiliation: The State Key Laboratory of Natural and Biomimetic Drugs, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
authors.forename: Ai-Hua
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yan-Hua
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Jiang-Hao
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: De-An
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D045784:Abietanes; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid / Q000379:methods; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional; D010616:Phenanthrenes / Q000032:analysis* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D018517:Plant Roots / Q000737:chemistry*; D027561:Salvia miltiorrhiza / Q000737:chemistry*; D013056:Spectrophotometry, Ultraviolet
chemical_list: D045784:Abietanes; D010616:Phenanthrenes; C021751:tanshinone; C037886:cryptotanshinone