Background: Glechoma longituba, one of the long-practiced traditional Chinese medicines in history, is still commonly used nowadays in oriental countries. Previous study indicates that phenolic acid and flavonoids have considerable bioactivities, thus, chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, apigenin-7-O-glucoside and rosmarinic acid were chosen as the marker components for the simultaneous determination to evaluate the intrinsic quality of G. longituba, and related high performance liquid chromatographic method was urgent to established.
Materials and methods: A HPLC method was established for simultaneous determination of four major active components in G. longituba, three batches which collected from different suppliers in Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangsu Provinces were determined.
Results: The contents of chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, apigenin-7-O-glucoside and rosmarinic acid in G. longituba samples analyzed were 0.00225-0.00234%, 0.0238-0.0242%, 0.00271-0.00313%, 0.830-0.896%, respectively.
Conclusion: The developed method can be applied to the intrinsic quality control of G. longituba.
Keywords: Glechoma longituba; High performance liquid chromatography; quality control; simultaneous determination.