Jiang Y, Li S P, Wang Y T, Chen X J, Tu P F
School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
J Chromatogr A. 2009 Mar 13;1216(11):2156-62. doi: 10.1016/j.chroma.2008.04.040. Epub 2008 Apr 23.
Herba Cistanche (Rou Cong Rong in Chinese), dried succulent stems of Cistanche deserticola or C. tubulosa, is a famous Chinese herbal medicine and has been recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. In recent years, another two non-official species, C. salsa and C. sinensis have also been used as Herba Cistanche in some regions of China. To investigate the possibility of using these two non-official species as alternatives to the official species, a high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection-mass spectrometry (HPLC-DAD-MS) fingerprint method was developed to comparatively analyze the crude herbs of these four species. The fingerprint of C. deserticola, a historically certified species of Herba Cistanche, serves as 'standard pattern' for comparing the similarities with the other species by means of similarity and Principle Component Analysis. Additionally, 18 characteristic peaks in the fingerprints were identified by comparing their retention times, UV spectra and ESI-MS data with those of the reference substances and/or the data in the literatures. The comparative results demonstrate that the fingerprints of C. tubulosa and C. salsa possess high similarity to the standard pattern, suggesting that these two species may be used as alternative species; while that of C. sinensis has low similarity (0.053 correlation coefficient) to the standard pattern, indicating that it cannot be used as the substitute of the official herb. However, the varying fingerprint patterns among the samples of C. deserticola collected from various habitats illustrate that the quality consistency of crude herbs is still a problem worthy of serious concern.
肉苁蓉（中文名为肉苁蓉），为列当科植物肉苁蓉或管花肉苁蓉干燥的肉质茎，是一味著名的中药材，已被载入《中国药典》。近年来，另外两种非法定品种，盐生肉苁蓉和中华肉苁蓉，在中国的一些地区也被用作肉苁蓉。为研究将这两种非法定品种用作法定品种替代品的可能性，建立了一种高效液相色谱 - 二极管阵列检测 - 质谱（HPLC - DAD - MS）指纹图谱方法，用于比较分析这四个品种的药材。历史上认证的肉苁蓉品种肉苁蓉的指纹图谱作为“标准图谱”，通过相似度和主成分分析与其他品种比较相似度。此外，通过将指纹图谱中的18个特征峰的保留时间、紫外光谱和电喷雾质谱数据与对照品的数据和/或文献中的数据进行比较，对其进行了鉴定。比较结果表明，管花肉苁蓉和盐生肉苁蓉的指纹图谱与标准图谱具有高度相似性，表明这两个品种可作为替代品种；而中华肉苁蓉的指纹图谱与标准图谱的相似度较低（相关系数为0.053），表明它不能用作法定药材的替代品。然而，从不同产地采集的肉苁蓉样品之间指纹图谱模式的差异表明，药材的质量一致性仍然是一个值得严重关注的问题。
