Quality Evaluation And Research Of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid By Gas Chromatography

Traditional Chinese medicine, as a part of traditional Chinese culture, has great contribution to physical health of human being. It is noted that their characteristics such as abundant resources and their unique function is significant by many nations of the world. Chinese medicine is now facing up with the new choice and challenge according to the rapidly increase of international economy. Lacking of the strict quality control standard, Chinese medicine can not joint with the international commerce and appreciated by international rules. Nowadays, the quality control in Chinese medcine is only on quality identification and specific quantify determination. Therefore, we must innovate to change the flawed checking method and chart out a feasible and comprehensive quality control standard.Nowadays, How to control the quality of traditional Chinese medicine effectively is the main problem in medicine research project. Many countries and organizations accept fingerprint as the main method of medicine quality control. In the years of 2000, the State Food and Drug Administration had issued a regulation named"the Requiring of Fingerprints Atlas Technology of Injection in Chinese Traditional Medicine", which provides a reliable evidence for the research of fingerprints in China.Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid is one of popular traditional Chinese medicines used in summer. It's quality control is only on specific component quantity and partly ingredient quality determination. Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid contains nine medical materials that include essential oil. The volatile constituents as an important indicator of quality assessment, have obvious pharmacological effects so as valueable to be detected and evaluated.Chinese medicine contains scores to hundreds of volatile components. It is practical when using few large contents component as the main features of each medicine by precision, stability and reproducibility inspection. The method is simple, reliable and separate effectively, while the relative retention value of each common peaks is stable. The volatile components can be detected by GC, combined with MS, the components can be identified. Each peak origin can be got by GC-MS. This method is precise and productive.In this topic, gas chromatography was used to establish the fingerprint of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid and analysis their characteristics. Studies includes: (1) The extraction methods of volatile components in Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid were optimized in detail, comparing study was focused on different extraction methods, extraction time and extraction solvents. Hydrodistillation, hexane as solvent were used finally. (2) Gas chromatographic separation conditions were optimized. DB-5ms (30m×0.25mm,0.25μm)capillary column were choosen to separate the components. Results showed that temperature-programmed from initial temperature 50℃up to 240℃with FID detector, can obtain best separation. (3) GC fingerprint of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid was established on the basis of systematic methodology after 10 batches of the same manufacturer samples were tested. 17 common peaks were identified. The relative retention time and relative peak areas ratio of 17 identified common peaks were calculated to evaluate their quality. Under the same GC conditions, content of (E)-Cinnamaldehyde in 10 batches of the same manufacturer of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid was calculated. (4) Under the same GC-MS conditions, eight different manufacturers of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid were analyzed. content of (E)-Cinnamaldehyde was determined.The experimental results showed that the fingerprint in different batches of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid from the same manufacturer is similar in the relative retention time. There was a little difference in the relative peak areas of common peaks, reflecting different chemical compositions. A significant differences in volatile components from different manufacturers were also found, It may be related to quality differences in medicinal materials origin, collection time and pharmaceutical technology. It provides an important foundation of quality controlling of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid. If the quality of raw materials is regularly controlled, the Chinese medicine Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid is controlled.The research is helpful to offer an effective pattern for quality control of Huoxiang Zhengqi Liquid. The proposed method can also be applied in other tincture analysis.