Rapid determination of paeoniflorin and three sugars in Radix Paeoniae Alba by capillary electrophoresis.

A method based on capillary electrophoresis with electrochemical detection has been developed for the separation and determination of paeoniflorin, sucrose, glucose, and fructose in traditional Chinese medicine, Radix Paeoniae Alba. The effects of several important factors, such as the concentration of NaOH, the separation voltage, the injection time, and the detection potential, were investigated to determine the optimum conditions. The detection electrode was a 300-microm diameter copper disc electrode at a working potential of +0.60 V (versus SCE). The four analytes can be well separated within 8 min in a 40 cm length fused-silica capillary at a separation voltage of 12 kV in a 75 mM NaOH aqueous solution. The relation between the peak current and the analyte concentration was linear over about 3 orders of magnitude with detection limits (S/N = 3) ranging from 1 to 2 microM for all analytes. The proposed method has been successfully applied for the determination of the paeoniflorin and sugars in real plant samples with satisfactory assay results.