Improved high performance liquid chromatographic determination of ginsenosides in Panax ginseng ‐based pharmaceuticals using a diol column

A reversed‐phase high‐performance liquid chromatographic assay for the simultaneous quantitative determination of seven ginsenosides, Rb 1 , Rb 2 , Rc, Rd, Rg 1 , Re and Rf in pharmaceutical preparations is described. Chromatographic separation was achieved in less than 20 min using a 250 × 4 mm Lichrospher, 5 µm, 100 Å diol column with detection at 203 nm. The method was validated over the range of 2.5–20 ng/µL using a 20 µL sample volume. The average accuracy at five concentrations was 90–100%, and the within‐day and between‐day precision ranged from 1 to 7% expressed as coefficient of variation. The detection limit and the quantitation limit of the method were 20 and 50 ng injected for each ginsenoside, respectively. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.