Development and Validation of Sensitive HPLC-UV-DAD Method for Determination of Diosgenin in Plants of Species of Dioscorea Genus

Abstract

Diosgenin is an important sapogenin used in the pharmaceutical industry as raw material for synthesizing steroidal hormones. In addition, the bioactivity of this metabolite has been evaluated in several molecular targets, making diosgenin promising as a new drug. In this study, a HPLC-UV-DAD method for determination of diosgenin was developed. The method was validated and considered suitable, because it showed good sensitivity and linearity in the concentration range of 0.25 a 10.0 µg mL-1 , the method showed good repeatability (CV% 1.0-3.3), good intermediate precision (CV% 0.9-3.7) and recovery values (93.1-97.7 %) close to 100 %. The good sensitivity of the method can also be verified by the limits of detection and quantification, which were respectively 3.0 e 8.0 mg of diosgenin per kg dry flour of sample, better than several methods previously cited in the literature that employed the same analytical technique. Samples Dioscorea bulbifera and Dioscorea trifida were evaluated by the proposed method, but, free diosgenin was not found in the conditions of analysis.