Quality evaluation of Lonicerae Japonicae Flos from different origins based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprinting and multicomponent quantitative analysis combined with chemical pattern recognition.

Abstract

Lonicerae Japonicae Flos (LJF) is widely used in food and traditional Chinese medicine. To meet demand, Lonicera japonica Thunb. is widely cultivated in many provinces of China. However, reported studies on the quality evaluation of LJF only used a single or a few active components as indicators, which could not fully reflect the quality of LJF. In the present study, we aimed to develop a methodology for comprehensively evaluating the quality of LJF from different origins based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) fingerprinting and multicomponent quantitative analysis combined with chemical pattern recognition. The HPLC method was developed for fingerprint analysis and was used to determine the contents of 19 components of LJF. To distinguish between samples and identify differential components, similarity analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis were performed. The HPLC fingerprint was established. Using the developed method, the contents of 19 components recognized in the fingerprint analysis were determined. Samples from different origins could be effectively distinguished. HPLC fingerprinting and multicomponent quantitative analysis combined with chemical pattern recognition is an efficient method for evaluating LJF.