INVESTIGATION OF CHEMICAL COMPONENTS VARIATION IN MAXING SHIGAN DECOCTION BY HPLC-DAD

Abstract

Many efficacious herbal prescriptions were used to cure a variety of diseases, each herb contains different components that generate their distinctive efficacy. Maxing Shigan decoction is such an example. Its chemical components were complicated, which couldn't be analyzed by the simple qualitative and quantitative method. So, the similarity and difference of chemical components in Maxing Shigan decoction, single herbs, and disassembled prescriptions were investigated by high-performance liquid chromatography diode array detector (HPLC–DAD) combined with chemometrics methods, which include smoothing and filtering, ordinary manual linear deduction, adaptive iteratively reweighted penalized least squares (airPLS), heuristic evolving latent projections (HELP), and alternative moving window factor analysis (AMWFA). These methods possess practical value in ordinary laboratory when facing complicated components analysis. All resolved pure peaks, including ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, methylephedrine, amygdalin, liquiritin, glycyrrhizic acid, and benzoic acid in the Maxing Shigan decoction, were determined. The dissolved ratios of seven bioactive constituents and other major mutative constituents among Maxing Shigan decoction and other disassembled prescriptions were comprehensively investigated and compared. The comparative results of chemical compositions can help us better understand the chemical composition variation of Maxing Shigan decoction due to the cooking process.