ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE To establish a method for the simultaneous determination of 10 rhubarb anthraquinones in Compound gentian sodium bicarbonate tablets and the content of rhaponticin，which are the characteristic components of artifacts，and to use the method to evaluate the quality of compound preparation containing Rheum officinale. METHODS The ultra-performance liquid chromatography （UPLC） method was adopted to determine the contents of 10 rhubarb anthraquinones （aloe-emodin-8-O-glucoside， rheinic acid-8-O-β-D-glucoside，emodin-8-O-glucoside，chrysophanol-8-O-β-D-glucoside，emodin monomethyl ether-8-O-β-D-glucoside， aloe-emodin，rheinic acid，emodin，chrysophanol，emodin monomethyl ether） and rhaponticin in 40 batches of Compound gentian sodium bicarbonate tablets from 8 manufacturers. The determination was performed on the Agilent Eclipse Plus C18 column with a mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile-0.1% phosphoric acid solution （gradient elution） at a flow rate of 0.3 mL/min； the column temperature was set at 30 ℃ ，and the injection volume was 5 μL. Combining principal component analysis and cluster analysis to synthesize the results of content determination，the quality of samples from different manufacturers was evaluated. RESULTS All of above 11 components showed favorable linear relationships with peak areas in their respective mass concentration ranges （r≥0.999 3），with RSDs of precision，repeatability and stability 296261547@qq.com less than 3% （n＝6）； average sample recoveries ranged 96.82%-98.92% （RSD≤1.74%，n＝6）； their contents were 0971-8247794。E-mail：304436784@qq.com 0.011 7-0.252 0，0-0.323 3，0.131 3-1.236 6，0.081 1-1.056 2，0.015 2-0.189 8，0.001 8-0.152 3，0-0.255 2，0.001 9-0.223 4，0.054 3-0.303 0，0.022 7-0.172 2，0-2.835 9 mg/g，respectively. The cumulative variance contribution of the first three principal components was 95.533%； the 40 batches of samples can be clustered into 4 categories：samples from enterprises a and d were in a category of their own，samples from enterprises f，b，g and e were in a category，and samples from enterprises c and h were in a category. There were large differences in the content of rhubarb anthraquinone in the samples from 8 manufacturers，and rhaponticin was only detected in the sample from one enterprise. CONCLUSIONS Established UPLC method is stable and reliable； it can be used for the content determination of 10 rhubarb anthraquinones and rhaponticin in Compound gentian sodium bicarbonate tablets.