Fingerprint analysis, multi-component quantitation, and antioxidant activity for the quality evaluation of Salvia miltiorrhiza var. alba by high-performance liquid chromatography and chemometrics.

Salvia miltiorrhiza Bge. var. alba C.Y. Wu and H.W. Li has wide prospects in clinical practice. A useful comprehensive method was developed for the quality evaluation of S. miltiorrhiza var. alba by three quantitative parameters: high-performance liquid chromatography fingerprint, ten-component contents, and antioxidant activity. The established method was validated for linearity, precision, repeatability, stability, and recovery. Principal components analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis were both used to evaluate the quality of the samples from different origins. The results showed that there were category discrepancies in quality of S. miltiorrhiza var. alba samples according to the three quantitative parameters. Multivariate linear regression was adopted to explore the relationship between components and antioxidant activity. Three constituents, namely, danshensu, rosmarinic acid, and salvianolic acid B, significantly correlated with antioxidant activity, and were successfully elucidated by the optimized multivariate linear regression model. The combined use of high-performance liquid chromatography fingerprint analysis, simultaneous multicomponent quantitative analysis, and antioxidant activity for the quality evaluation of S. miltiorrhiza var. alba is a reliable, comprehensive, and promising approach, which might provide a valuable reference for other herbal products in general to improve their quality control.

[Correlation analysis between HPLC fingerprint of astragali radix extracts and antifatigue effect].

OBJECTIVE: To study the correlation analysis between the HPLC fingerprints of Astragali Radix extracts and the antifatigue effects. METHODS: Three types of extracts of Astragali Radix were obtained and arranged by uniform design for HPLC fingerprint analysis and the antifatigue effect experiment. The correlation analysis between the HPLC fingerprints of Astragali Radix extracts and the antifatigue effects were carried out with orthogonal signal correction-partial least squares (OSC- PLS) method. RESULTS: The antifatigue activity could be strengthened by chromatographic peaks in the fingerprints of flavonoids and other kinds of ingredients (including saponins), but could be weakened by Astragalus polysaccharides in Astragali Radix. Among total variables, there were 36 variables (including 35 peaks and a variable of Astragalus polysaccharides) that had important contribution to "fingerprint-efficacy" model. CONCLUSION: OSC-PLS can remove uncorrelated information between fingerprint and efficacy, simplify the structure of model and improve the interpretative ability of model, and could be a reference method to investigate chromatographic fingerprint-efficacy relationship of complex system of traditional Chinese medicine.