Abstract:

The theoretical model of linearly quantified fingerprint method (LQFM) for qualitative and quantitative control traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been developed based on the relationship of linear function between a sample and the reference fingerprint vector, as the concepts of correlation coefficient r, slope a, intercept b, linearly qualitative similarity S_L, linearly quantitative similarity M_L and so on were introduced into the study. The high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector (DAD) was used to simultaneously obtain chromatograms of ten batches of Renshen Guipi Wan (RSGPW) at 203, 228 and 326 nm, separately. The model of LQFM was applied to evaluate the three-wavelength fingerprints for the quality control of RSGPW, it could obviously distinguish RSGPW from different resources and the results showed the quality was almost consistent from the same manufacture. The results of LQFM were compared with those of the systematically quantified fingerprint method (SQFM), a known method for quality control of TCM. It proved that LQFM can evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively the complex system of TCM which is composed of diverse chemical components. The quality control can be better and more reliable by multiple-wavelength fingerprints which give full consideration of the ultraviolet absorption characteristics of different components.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), linearly quantified fingerprint method (LQFM), Renshen Guipi Wan (RSGPW), three-wavelength fingerprints (THW-FPs), traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)