Cold-hot Nature Distinguish of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Herbs by Discriminant Analysis of 1H-NMR Spectral Data

Abstract

“Cold-hot nature” is the key part of the theory on herb properties in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Traditionally, the cold-hot natures of medicinal herbs were ascertained mainly dependent on medicinal experience. Nowadays systematic methods considering the material basis from a variety of chemical substances are needed and may be reliable to differentiate cold-hot nature of various herbs. In the present study, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proton (1H-NMR) was combined with pattern recognition techniques for cold-hot nature classification of Chinese medicinal herbs for the first time. 1H-NMR determination was carried out on 62 kinds of Chinese medicinal herbs. Canonical discriminant functions (CDF) and fisher discriminant analysis (FDA) then were applied to analyze the large 1H-NMR spectra data set obtained. The results indicated that the combination of 1H-NMR and multivariate statistical analysis may provide a more efficient means for the research and exploration of cold-hot nature of medicinal herbs.