Study on RP-HPLC chromatography fingerprint of Radix Codonopsis of different age from Shanxi province.

Objective Chromatography fingerprint of Radix Codonopsis of different age from Shanxi province was studied to provide the reference for the science appraisal of intrinsic quality of Radix codonopsis. Method A RP-HPLC method was applied on GraceSmart-RP18 (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 μm) column with acetonitrile-0.1% acetic acid gradient elution as mobile phase, and the flow-rate was 0.6 mL/min. The detection wavelength was at 268 nm and the column temperature was at 30 ℃. Result Chromatography fingerprint of Radix Codonopsis can demonstrate obviously the difference and the similarity of Radix Codonopsis of different age. The RSD were lower than 3% in the precision, stability and the repetitiveness trial, and the codonopsis pilosula alkyne glucoside can be used as the reference to identify the active composition of Radix Codonopsis. Conclusion The method was simple, reproducible and reliable. The integrity of fingerprint can be used to supply the reference for the quality control of Radix Codonopsis from Shanxi provice.