Simultaneous Determination of α-Glucosidase Inhibitory Triterpenoids in Psidium guajava Using HPLC–DAD–ELSD and Pressurized Liquid Extraction

Psidium guajava, a popular food and medicine dual purposes plant cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions, has been widely used as food crop and folk medicine, such as anti-diabetes agent, around the world. Triterpenoids have been considered as the major active ingredients of P. guajava. In the present study, a high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array and evaporative light scattering detectors (HPLC–DAD–ELSD) method was developed for simultaneous determination of nine triterpenoids in P. guajava. Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) was performed for sample preparation, and the analysis was achieved on a Cosmosil 5C18-MS-II (Nacalai Tesque, Kyoto, Japan) column eluted with gradient 0.1% aqueous formic acid-methanol system. The drift tube temperature of ELSD was set at 40 °C, and nitrogen flow-rate was at 1.6 L/min. All calibration curves for the analytes showed good linear regression (R(2) > 0.9992) within test ranges. The established method was validated for intra-day and inter-day precisions (RSDs < 5%) and accuracy (recovery 94.23–106.87%). The validated method was successfully applied to determinate nine triterpenoids in 15 samples from the leave or fruit of P. guajava. In addition, the α-glucosidase inhibition assay showed good α-glucosidase inhibition activity in almost all the determined triterpenoids. The present study suggested that triterpenoids should be the quality control markers for P. guajava and HPLC–DAD–ELSD was an effective tool for the quality control of P. guajava.