Research on Similarity of Different Species of Ginseng Using High Performance Liquid Chromatographic and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Methods

Résumé du livre

The Chinese medicinal plant ginseng is widely used as a supplement in beverages and foods, while it also has the functbn of assisting the treatment of type II diabetes. There are difficulties in traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) standardization because of the complexity of TCM preparations. Various methods including chromatography and spectroscopy are used currently for the quality control of Chinese medicines. For instance, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and its hyphenations with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) have been suggested. -- 5 batches of sanqi, 5 batches of Asian ginseng, 10 batches of wild American ginseng and 15 batches of cultivated American ginseng were studied. The extracts were subjected to HPLC and NMR spectroscopic analysis. Each batch was prepared and analyzed in triplicate. HPLC chromatograms and NMR spectra were exported and around seventy thousand data points were obtained. The data were analyzed with Pirouette using principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). -- 5 batches of sanqi were correctly discriminated from the other samples. At the same time, the boundaries between Asian ginseng and a few batches of wild American ginseng as well as those between wild American ginseng and cultivated American ginseng are not quite clear. The advantages and disadvantages of HPLC, and NMR spectroscopic technology are illustrated. -- Both HPLC and NMR spectroscopic methods are applicable to multivariate data analysis. It is found that HPLC analysis is not suitable for similarity research in comparison with NMR spectroscopy when a gradient elution is applied at low detection wavelength. On the other hand, NMR spectroscopy is more appropriate for complex TCM components due to its robustness. It is hoped that this work may contribute to the eventual licensing protocol of TCM as traditional medicines.