Asian Journal
Of Traditional Medicines

Abstract: A simple and reliable high-performance liquid chromatographic method was established for determination of glycyrrhizic acid and
glycyrrhetinic acid content in different period of fermentation of Rhizoma Pinelliae Fermentata. The chromatographic separation
was performed on a Elite C18 column (250 mm×4.6 mm, 5 μm) with a gradient elution of acetonitrile and 0.05% aqueous phosphoric
acid at a flow rate of 0.8 ml/min. The detector wavelength was 250 nm and the column temperature was room temperature. The linear
ranges were from 1.32 to 33 μg/ml (r=0.9991) for glycyrrhizic acid,12.48 to 624 μg/ml (r=0.9991) for glycyrrhetinic acid respectively.
The precision for glycyrrhizic acid, glycyrrhetinic acid was1.6%,1.8%. The method recoveries were 99.8% for glycyrrhizic acid,
100.1% for glycyrrhetinic acid. The contents of the target analytes in different period of fermentation of Rhizoma Pinelliae
Fermentata were (37.43-20.61) μg/g for glycyrrhizic acid, (134.72-99.12) μg/g for glycyrrhetinic acid. The method is simple, accurate
and reproducible. It can be used to provides the theory basis for the quality control of traditional Chinese medicine Rhizoma Pinelliae
Fermentata. Finally, it provides a identification standards for Rhizoma Pinelliae Fermentata’s production and market circulation.

Key words: Rhizoma Pinelliae Fermentata, HPLC, glycyrrhizic acid, glycyrrhetinic acid, quantitative determination