[Determination of ephedrine, pseudoephedrine and strychnine in jiufen san by HPLC]

An HPLC method was established to separate and determine ephedrine (I), pseudoephedrine (II) and strychnine (III) in Chinese traditional medicine, Jiufen San, on a mu-Bondapak C18 column (10 microns, 3.9 mm x 30 cm) by using 0.01 mol/L KH2PO4-methanol as mobile phase. The programmed gradient elution was carried out and recoveries were determined as 98.94 +/- 2.2% for I, 97.37 +/- 1.9% for II and 100.7 +/- 1.9% for III respectively. An extracting and pretreatment method was designed and the result showed that the extracting efficiency of this method was 1.33 times (I) and 1.29 times (II) higher than those of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia method.