Abstract
Selection of chemical markers is crucial for the quality control of herbal medicines, including authentication of genuine species, harvesting the best quality raw materials, evaluation of post-harvesting handling, assessment of intermediates and finished products, and detection of harmful or toxic ingredients. Ideal chemical markers should be the therapeutic components of herbal medicines. However, for most herbal medicines, the therapeutic components have not been fully elucidated or easily monitored. Bioactive, characteristic, main, synergistic, correlative, toxic and general components may be selected. This article reviews the effective use of chemical markers in the quality control of herbal medicines including the selection criteria considering the roles and physicochemical factors which may affect the effective use of chemical markers.
Highlights
Herbal medicines, known as botanical medicines or phytomedicines, refer to the medicinal products of plant roots, leaves, barks, seeds, berries or flowers that can be used to promote health and treat diseases
We suggest a new classification of eight categories of chemical markers, namely (1) therapeutic components, (2) bioactive components, (3) synergistic components, (4) characteristic components, (5) main components, (6) correlative components, (7) toxic components, and (8) general components used with fingerprint spectrum
Applications of chemical markers we describe cases to exemplify how chemical markers are used to evaluate the quality of herbal medicines in manufacturing, and as potential lead compounds for new drug development
Summary
Known as botanical medicines or phytomedicines, refer to the medicinal products of plant roots, leaves, barks, seeds, berries or flowers that can be used to promote health and treat diseases. Chemical markers should be unique components that contribute to the therapeutic effects of a herbal medicine. Therapeutic components Therapeutic components possess direct therapeutic effects of a herbal medicine They may be used as chemical markers for both qualitative and quantitative assessments. Chen et al developed an HPLC method to simultaneously quantify up to 15 flavonoids, of which epimedin A, B, C and icariin were selected as chemical markers for the quality assessment of the Epimedium species documented in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2005 edition) [50]. Correlative components can be used as chemical markers to evaluate the quality of herbal medicines originated from different geographical regions and stored for different periods of time. Temperature Bioactive components of Radix Astragali, isoflavonoids have been used as chemical markers in the quality control of the herb [18,19,20]. We confirmed that GB1 was a pure compound [133]
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