Determination of matrine and oxymatrine in Sophora Flavescens Ait. via high performance liquid chromatography

In the present work, a reversed phase high performance liquid chromatographic method (HPLC) has been developed and validated for analysis of matrine and oxymatrine in Sophora Flavescens Ait. HPLC separation of the alkaloids was performed on a C18 column. A mobile phase composed of methanol-water-trifluoroacetic in a ratio of 16:84:0.002 (v/v) was found to be the most suitable mobile phase for this separation. The extracted amounts are 0.0091 and 0.15mg/g and the relative standard deviations were 3.3% for the matrine and 2.9% for the oxymatrine analysis.