A Simple and Sensitive Dispersive Micro-Solid-Phase Extraction Coupled with High-Performance Liquid Chromatography...

Honokiol and magnolol were considered as markers for the analysis of Cortex Magnoliae Officinalis, its related Chinese Patent Medicines and their metabolites. However, the determination of these two analytes in a water-soluble sample is difficult and therefore requires a more efficient method.

To develop a sensitive method for the determination of honokiol and magnolol in a water-soluble sample for better quality control of Cortex Magnoliae Officinalis and its related Chinese Patent Medicines.

In this work, a combination of dispersive micro-solid-phase extraction (DMSPE) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has been developed for simultaneous preconcentration and determination of honokiol and magnolol in complex bio-samples. Several experimental factors affecting the extraction efficiency were optimized by single factor test.

Under the optimized extraction conditions, the proposed method exhibited good linearity of not less than 0.9998, satisfactory precision with relative standard deviation of less than 1.3%, and acceptable mean recoveries of 97.3% and 101.5% for honokiol and magnolol, respectively. Furthermore, the method exhibits extremely high sensitivity with detection limits of 0.0097 and 0.0231 ng/mL, which is even more sensitive than those methods developed by MS.

The method established in this study is fast, economic, accurate, easy to operate, and importantly well suited to the extraction and analysis of honokiol and magnolol in a real complex sample matrix.