Determination of three phenylethanoid glycosides in Osmanthus fragrans fruits by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

A simple and sensitive high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection method has been developed for the determination of active components in Osmanthus fragrans fruits. In this work, reversed-phase liquid chromatography with a C18 column and mobile phase of methanol/water were applied to effectively separate three phenylethanoid glycosides, including salidroside, neonuezhenide, and nuezhenide. The limits of detection of salidroside, neonuezhenide, and nuezhenide were 3.9, 25.4, and 24.2 ng/mL respectively. Then this method was applied to determine the contents in several batches of O. fragrans fruits extract, which were collected from Wuhan, Hefei, and Changsha. Meanwhile, the method was used for the detection of rat plasma administrated with O. fragrans fruits extract, which could be an alternative method applied to the field of pharmacokinetics study in future. The results implied that the developed method was economical, simple, convenient, and sensitive, which was appropriate for the determination of salidroside, neonuezhenide, and nuezhenide in O. fragrans fruits.