Abstract: A high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method was developed for the simultaneous determination of lobetyolin, pachymic acid, glycyrrhizic acid, atractylenoide III and atractylenolideI in Sijunzi bolus. The separation was performed on an HIQ SIL C18 V column (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 μm) with 0.5% acetic acid-methanol as the mobile phase of gradient elution at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The detection was performed with an evaporation light scattering detector (ELSD) and the sample volume was 10 μL. The temperature of drift tube and heating grade of nebulizer was respectively set at 55 ℃ and 60% at 0.2 MPa of pressure. Nitrogen gas was used as carrier gas. Under the optimized conditions, there were good linear relationships between the logarithm values of mass concentration and the peak areas of lobetyolin, pachymic acid, glycyrrhizic acid, atractylenoide III and atractylenolide I in the ranges of 0.076~1.21, 0.048~0.76, 0.153~2.45, 0.045~0.72 and 0.098~1.56 g/L, respectively. The recoveries of the five components were between 97.13% and 100.25%, the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were between 1.23% and 2.44%. This method is simple, rapid, accurate and suitable for the quality control of Sijunzi bolus.

Key words: Chinese patent medicine , effective components, Sijunzi bolus, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)