Introduction: Arbutin is a skin-whitening agent that occurs naturally in the bark and leaves of various plants. It is commonly quantified in plant extracts and skin-whitening products by HPLC.
Objective: To develop an alternative gas chromatographic method for the separation and quantification of arbutin in Origanum majorana and Arctostaphylos uva-ursi extracts.
Methodology: N,O-Bis(trimethylsilyl)acetamide and trimethylchlorosilane were used as silylation reagents, and the gas chromatographic separation of silylated extracts and standards was performed using a DB-5 narrow bore column. GC-MS was used for the compound identification, and the quantification was carried out by GC-FID. The quantitative results were compared with those of HPLC analysis.
Results: The developed method gave a good sensitivity with linearity in the range 0.33-500 mg/mL and recovery >98%, allowing the quantification of arbutin in O. majorana and A. uva-ursi extracts. The relative standard deviations (RSD) relating to intra-day and inter-day precision were <0.002% and <4.8%, respectively. The GC results correlated well with those obtained by HPLC analysis.
Conclusion: The analysis of marjoram and bearberry samples showed that the established GC method was rapid, selective, and demonstrated that arbutin could be screened alternatively by gas chromatography.