Determination of Artemisinin in Artemisia annua L. by Reversed Phase HPLC

Abstract Artemisinin is a compound of current interest in the treatment of drug‐resistant malaria. An accurate, sensitive, and reproducible reversed‐phase HPLC with UV detection method is described for the determination of artemisinin in the herb of Artemisa annua L. Artemisinin in the extracts was converted into a UV‐absorbing compound, Q260 by being treated with 0.2% (by weight) NaOH solution and then 0.08 M acetic acid. A reversed‐phase C18 silica column (Discovery 250 × 4.6 mm, 5 µm) was selected as a fixed phase, and kept at 30°C. The mobile phase was 45/10/45 (by volume) methanol/acetonitrile/0.9' mM Na2HPO4‐3.6 mM NaH2PO4 buffer (pH 7.76). The flow rate was 0.5 mL/min. The detection wavelength was 260 nm. The standard calibration curve was linear with correlation coefficient 0.9996. The artemisinin content in the herb of Artemisa annua L. was 0.652%. The relative standard deviation and recovery were 1.1% and 98.9%, respectively. Keywords: ArtemisininHPLCUV detection Acknowledgment Project 20276058 was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China; Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (No. 20030335070).