Analysis of the monosaccharide components in Angelica polysaccharides by high performance liquid chromatography

An analytical method of on-line high performance liquid chromatography (HLPC) was developed to simultaneously separate and identify the monosaccharide composition of three Angelica polysaccharide fractions (APF), named APF1, APF2 and APF3. In this method, APF were hydrolyzed into component monosaccharides and subsequently labeled with 1-phenyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (PMP), and then the labeled monosaccharide derivatives were separated by a reverse-phase C18 column and monitored by UV absorbance at 250 nm. The results showed that nine monosaccharide derivatives have been well separated by HPLC under optimized conditions and the composition analysis of monosaccharides from APF samples could be achieved using acid hydrolysis and a set of monosaccharide standards. With this method, the within-day and day to day precisions of the composition determinations were 3.41-4.87% and 3.12-4.93% (RSD), respectively. The method was successfully applied to the determination of the component monosaccharides of Angelica polysaccharides.