Simultaneous determination of two Amadori compounds in Korean red ginseng (Panax ginseng) extracts and rat plasma by high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection

A new simple, rapid and sensitive high-performance anion-exchange chromatography method with pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC–PAD) was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of two Amadori compounds, arginyl-fructose and arginyl-fructosyl-glucose in Korean red ginseng (Panax ginseng) extracts, rat plasma. Separation of the two target analytes was efficiently undertaken on CarboPac PA1 anion-exchange column with isocratic elution (400 mM sodium hydroxide and deionized water (90:10, v/v)) at flow rate 0.7 mL/min within 15 min of single chromatographic run. Under optimized conditions, the detection limits (signal-to-noise ratio equal to 3) were 20 and 25 ng/mL for arginyl-fructose and arginyl-fructosyl-glucose, respectively. Calibration curves of peak area for the two analytes were linear over three orders of magnitude with a correlation coefficients greater than 0.999. The accuracy of the method was tested by recovery measurement of the spiked samples which yielded good results of 94.15–102.62%. This method was successfully applied to the quantification of arginyl-fructose and arginyl-fructosyl-glucose in herbal extracts and in the plasma samples from rat.