ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To establish quality control criteria for medicinal herb Cajanus cajan based on the determination of longistylin A and longistylin C, two bioactive and specific stilbenes of the plant.</p><p><b>METHOD</b>Longistylin A and longistylin C were obtained from the leaves of C. cajan by silica gel column chromatography and identified as marker compounds of this plant by spectroscopic analysis. A RP-HPLC method was established to determine the two compounds.</p><p><b>RESULT</b>Longistylin A and longistylin C were well separated on a Thermo BDS Hypersil C18 column (4.6 mm x 250 mm, 5 microm) with a mobile phase methanol-water (8:2), and showed good linearity in the range of 0.00288 - 0.0576 microg and 0.0112 - 0.224 microg, respectively. The average recoveries were 98.9% and 97.2% with RSD of 2.4% and 2.2% for these two compounds, respectively.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The established analysis method is simple and accurate, whicn can be used for quality control of C. cajan.</p>