Abstract: The capillary electrophoresis fingerprints(CEFP) of Flos Lonicerae Japonicae was established to control its quality. In the capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) pattern 50 mmol/L sodium borate contained 20 mmol/L β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) adjusted to pH 8.0 with phosphoric acid was applied as the background electrolyte. The running voltage was 12 kV and the detection wavelength was 254 nm. The Flos Lonicerae Japonicae was extracted by water and the sample solution was injected into the capillary by hydraulic pressure in 15 s. The 18 common peaks were marked according to the emerging rate of 100% and by comparing each fingerprint with the other one among the 13 samples cultivated in different places, in which chlorogenic acid was selected as the reference peak. The CEFP had good precision and reproducibility with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of the relative migration times less than 3% and the RSDs of the relative peak areas within 6.1%. The novel concepts of the apparent quantitative similarity (R), the quantitative similarity calculated by vector projection (C) and the quantitative similarity (P) were introduced firstly. The good crude drugs should posses two merits as follows: the qualitative similarity (S) which displays the distribution of the chemical constituents in sample should be more than 0.90; the quantitative similarities (R, C, P, Q) that disclose the overall contents of the chemical constituents in sample should be within 80%120%.This method was applied in the quality control practice, and the results showed that the method could be used for the overall quality control of Flos Lonicerae Japonicae and is especially suitable for qualitative and quantitative evaluation of chromatographic fingerprints both in chemical constituent distribution and in contents.

Key words: apparent quantitative similarity (R), fingerprint, Flos Lonicerae Japonicae , quantitative similarity (P), quantitative similarity calculated by vector shadow (C), capillary electrophoresis (CE)