Perilla frutescens (L.) Britt.(Lamiaceae), a famous traditional Chinese medicine, has been used for the treatment of various diseases. To evaluate the quality of P. frutescens, a simple, rapid and accurate high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was developed for the assessment of two bioactive triterpene acids: oleanolic acid (OA) and ursolic acid (UA). The HPLC system used an Kromasil 100 C18 RP column with methanol and aqueous H3PO4 as the mobile phase and detection at 210 nm. The method was precise with relative standard deviations for these two constituents that ranged between 0.3-0.6 % (intraday) and 0.6-1.2 % (interday). The contents of the OA and UA in P. frutescens were determined with recoveries ranging from 96.7 to 102.0%. The content of these two phytochemicals in different parts of P. frutescens growing at five different locations of China were determined to establish the effectiveness of the method.
Perilla frutescens; Lamiaceae; HPLC; oleanolic acid; ursolic acid
