HPLC determination of licorice flavonoids in Sini effervescent tablets

Objective:To establish an HPLC for determination of licorice flavonoids in Sini effervescent tablets.Methods:An HPLC method was applied to separate and qualify the main components of licorice flavonoids,liquiritigenin and isoliquiritigenin after acid hydrolysis was performed on these extracts.The samples were separated by a Hypersil ODS2 C18 column(4.6 mm×250 mm,5 μm) using acetonitrile-water as the mobile phase for gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.8 mL·min-1,detection wavelength 230 nm,the column temperature 40 ℃.Results:The calibration curves were linear in the range of 0.0219-0.656 μg(r=0.9999) for liquiritigenin,and 0.0216-0.647 g(r=0.9999) for isoliquiritigenin;The sum of average recovery for liquiritigenin and isoliquiritigenin was 100.6%,and RSD was 1.5%(n=6).Conclusion:The HPLC method developed for simultaneous determination of liquiritigenin and isoliquiritigenin is specific with good separation effect and high sensitivity which can be used for the quality control of Sini effervescent tablets.