Simultaneous determination of allantoin, choline and l-arginine in Rhizoma Dioscoreae by capillary electrophoresis

A rapid, easy and reproducible capillary electrophoresis (CE) method for the simultaneous determination of allantoin, choline and arginine in Rhizoma Dioscoreae was developed first time. Under the optimum condition, the three analytes could be well separated within 5 min in a 70 cm (60 cm effective length) × 75 μm i.d. capillary. The relative standard deviations for both migration time and peak height were less than 3.20%. The linear response range was 5.0–150, 0.9–100 and 1.0–200 μg/ml for arginine, choline and allantoin, respectively. The detection limit of three components was 2.0, 0.4 and 0.5 μg/ml for arginine, choline and allantoin, respectively. Contents of arginine, choline and allantoin in the crude drug of Rhizoma Dioscoreae could be easily determined by the proposed method with satisfactory results.