ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE： To establish the method for simultaneous determination of 4 kinds of flavones such as sutellarin， sutellarein， luteolin and apigenin in Scutellaria barbata decoction pieces， and to conduct principle component analysis. METHODS： HPLC method was adopted. The determination was performed on Agilent ZOXDB-C18 column with mobile phase consisted of methanol-acetonitrile （80 ∶ 20，V/V）-1％ acetic acid solution （gradient elution） at the flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The detection wavelength was set at 335 nm， and column temperature was 30 ℃. The sample size was 10 μL. Principal component analysis was carried out by SPSS 20.0 and SIMCA-P 13.0 software. RESULTS： The linear ranges of sutellarin， sutellarein， luteolin and apigenin were 0.131-1.446 μg（r＝0.999 0）， 0.031-0.345 μg（r＝0.999 7）， 0.005-0.055 μg（r＝0.999 2）， 0.024-0.268 μg（r＝0.999 2）， respectively. The limits of quantitation were 1.178 8， 0.602 9， 0.744 1， 1.079 1 ng； the limits of detection were 0.353 6， 0.106 1， 0.223 2， 0.323 7 ng；RSDs of precision， stability and reproducibility tests were all lower than 2％. The recoveries were 99.38％-100.56％（RSD＝0.44％，n＝6）， 91.01％-96.81％（RSD＝2.43％， n＝6）， 91.44％-97.34％（RSD＝2.59％， n＝6）， 96.21％- 99.26％（RSD＝1.23％，n＝6）， respectively. By principal component analysis， principal component 1 and prinicipal component 2 were main influential factors of sample， quality accumulative variance contribution rate of them was 92.573％（＞80％）. The comprehensive score of sample S14-3 was the highest， and the overall quality was relatively good； samples S14-2， S14-3 were the second. These 3 batches of sample were processed and produced in S. barbata planting base with stable quality. CONCLUSIONS： Established method is simple and rapid， and can be used for simultaneous determination of 4 kinds of flavones in S. barbata decoction pieces. Principle component analysis can provide reference for the quality control of S. barbata decoction pieces.