High-Performance Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Ferulic Acid in Plasma

Abstract

A simple, rapid and sensitive reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the quantitative determination of ferulic acid in plasma was developed. Ferulic acid in plasma was extracted with ethyl ether, separated on a reversed-phase C₁₈ column with a mixture of acetonitrile and 0.1м acetic acid (1 : 3, v/v) as a mobile phase, and quantitated by ultraviolet (UV) absorbance measurement at 313nm. 3, 4-Dimethoxycinnamic acid was used as an internal standard. The detection limit (signal-to-noise ratio=3) and the mean recovery from plasma were 1 ng (as amount injected) and 99.5±3.3%, respectively. The plasma levels of ferulic acid following oral administration of γ-oryzanol were determined by the present method and the mass fragmentographic (MF) method. A close correlation between the results of HPLC and those of MF was observed (γ=0.988). The present HPLC method was found to be applicable to the determination of ferulic acid in plasma in place of the MF method.