Detection of Polyphenols and Tanshinones in Commercial Danshen by Liquid Chromatography with UV and Mass Spectrometry
MING-JAW DON1,2, HAN-CHIEH KO1, CHENG-WEI YANG2 AND YUN-LIAN LIN1,*
1 National Research Institute of Chinese Medicine, Taipei City 112, Taiwan, R.O.C.
2 Department of Chemistry, Chinese Culture University, Taipei City 111, Taiwan, R.O.C.
(Received: January 25, 2006; Accepted: May 24, 2006)
Danshen, the dried rhizome of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge is a widely used herb in traditional Chinese medicinal preparations to treat cardiovascular diseases, renal and liver diseases. Tanshinones and salvianolic acids are used as markers to survey the commercial available products. In this study, a convenient high-performance liquid chromatographic method was developed to simultaneously separate and identify six main polyphenolic components, caffeic acid (1), danshensu (2), lithospermic acid (3), rosmarinic acid (4), salvianolic acid B (5) and salvianolic acid A (6), and four major abietane-type diterpenes, 15,16-dihydrotanshinone I (7), cryptotanshinone (8), tanshinone I (9), and tanshinone IIA (10), with UV and MS detectors by comparing their retention time, MS and MS2 data with those data obtained from the authentic compounds. A good resolution of all the analytes was obtained by choosing methanol and 0.25% aqueous acetic acid (adjusted to pH 2.77 with 1N HCl) as the mobile phase. By using LC-UV (290 nm)-MS method, polyphenols (1-6) and tanshinones (7-10) were easily detected and unambiguously identified in commercial Danshen.
Key words: Danshen, Salvia miltiorrhiza, LC-UV-MS, polyphenols, tanshinones, chemical profile.