Journal des sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques

Simultaneous Determination of Three Quassinoids in Brucea javanica by High Performance Liquid Chromatography

Abstract

Jun Ma, Chun-Xia Xiao, Kang-Jia Liu and Ren-Wang Jiang

Objective: To establish a method for quantitative determination of three quassinoids (bruceoside B, bruceoside A and brusatol) in Brucea javanica by HPLC.

Method: The determination was carried out on a Cosmosil (4.6×250 mm, 5 μm) C₁₈ column eluted by a gradient elution program of H₂O (A)-CH₃OH (B) at a flow rate of 1.0 mL min^-1, and the detection wavelength was 221 nm.

Result: The calibration curve of bruceoside B, bruceoside A and brusatol were linear in the range of 0.722-2.166, 2.074-6.222 and 0.503-1.509 μg, respectively with all the correlations of 0.9999. The average recovery of bruceoside B, bruceoside A and brusatol were 96.1%, 106.3% and 96.7%, with the RSD of 4.4%, 5.9% and 4.8% (n=5), respectively.

Conclusion: The results showed that the content of bruceoside B was in the range of 0.05%~0.12%, bruceoside A was in the range of 0.19%~0.38% and brusatol was in the range of 0.07%~0.18%, indicating that the contents of bruceoside B, bruceoside A and brusatol varied among different sources. Furthermore, the fingerprinting chromatograms of eight samples of Brucea javanica were established and the characteristic peaks were identified by mass spectrometry. The method was accurate, simple and convenient, which could be used for the quality control of Brucea javanica.