Abstract
Quality control has been a significant issue in herbal medicine since herbs became widely used to heal. Modern technologies have improved the methods of evaluating the quality of medicinal herbs but the methods of adulterating them have also grown in sophistication. In this paper we undertook a comprehensive literature search to identify the key analytical techniques used in the quality control of herbal medicine, reviewing their uses and limitations. We also present a new tool, based on mitochondrial profiling, that can be used to measure medicinal herbal quality. Besides being fundamental to the energy metabolism required for most cellular activities, mitochondria play a direct role in cellular signalling, apoptosis, stress responses, inflammation, cancer, ageing, and neurological function, mirroring some of the most common reasons people take herbal medicines. A fingerprint of the specific mitochondrial effects of medicinal herbs can be documented in order to assess their potential efficacy, detect adulterations that modulate these effects and determine the relative potency of batches. Furthermore, through this method it will be possible to assess whole herbs or complex formulas thus avoiding the issues inherent in identifying active ingredients which may be complex or unknown. Thus, while current analytical methods focus on determining the chemical quality of herbal medicines, including adulteration and contamination, mitochondrial functional analysis offers a new way of determining the quality of plant derived products that is more closely linked to the biological activity of a product and its potential clinical effectiveness.
Highlights
Quality control of medicinal herbs have been an issue for as long as humans have been using plants to heal
Various chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques have been applied to the quality control of herbal medicines in addition to organoleptic and wet chemistry methods
Advances in analytical hardware have led to more and more detailed analysis of plant products and licensed herbal medicines, which are required to conform to the standards of the national pharmacopoeias
Summary
Quality control of medicinal herbs have been an issue for as long as humans have been using plants to heal. This does not include the US$22.7 billion market in conventional tea (Camellia sinensis (L.) Kuntze Theaceae) (Market Research Future, 2019) with water-based infusions and decoctions being some of the oldest and most popular methods of extracting the medicinal properties from herbs (The Herbarium, 2009) Both of these groups will be considered under the term “medicinal herbal teas” for the purpose of this review. Visual identification has been enhanced by microscopic inspection and the simple chemico-physical analyses, described by Dioscorides, has been replaced by more advanced chemometric testing in the forms of chromatography and spectroscopy developed during the twentieth century These methods can isolate and analyse the full chemical composition of plants and prove useful in detecting adulterations with drugs or contaminants that may be invisible to the human eye and undetectable to the senses of taste and smell. Once a unique pattern has been detailed, the potency of each batch can be ascertained
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