Quality Evaluation of Modified Bo-Yang-Hwan-O-Tang by Capillary Electrophoresis and High-performance Liquid Chromatography

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and capillary electrophoresis (CE) were used to identify five active components in the modified herbal decoction Bo-Yang-Hwan-O-Tang (mBHT), i.e., amygdalin, decursin, paeoniflorin, salvianolic acid B, and calycosin-7-O-beta-D-glycoside. These components were identified by comparing their retention times and mass spectra with those of reference compounds. The conditions of both analytical methods were optimized and validated. Sufficient separation of target analytes was achieved using a buffer consisting of 40 mM sodium borate and 60 mM sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) containing 10% methanol (pH 9.5) at 250 nm for CE analysis and gradient elution with a water-methanol mobile phase and ultraviolet (UV) photodiode array detector (DAD) at 250 nm for HPLC analysis. The mBHT components were determined within 65 min by HPLC and 16 min by CE. All calibration curves showed high linearity (R > 0.999) within the ranges tested. Intra-day and inter-day precision were less than 1.6% and 1.8% for HPLC and 2.5% and 4.8% for CE, respectively. The accuracy of the methods ranged from 98.8% to 102.3% for HPLC and from 95.9% to 108.2% for CE.