Study on similar traditional Chinese medicines cornu Cervi pantotrichum, cornu Cervi and cornu Cervi degelatinatum by FT-IR and 2D-IR correlation spectroscopy.

As complicated mixture systems, traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are very difficult to identify and discriminate, especially for the drug samples have the same source. Therefore, finding a rapid and effective identification method for the similar TCM is the most pressing task in TCM research. In this paper, the macroscopic IR fingerprint method including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), the second derivative spectra and two-dimensional correlation infrared spectroscopy (2D-IR), were applied to studying and identifying three very similar traditional Chinese animal drugs Cornu Cervi Pantotrichum (CCP), Cornu Cervi (CC) and Cornu Cervi Degelatinatum (CCD). On the basis of the different FT-IR and 2D-IR spectra ratios of amide I bands, amide II bands and Ca(3)(PO(4))(2), three similar animal drugs of the same source were successfully identified and discriminated. Then the FT-IR spectra data of total 30 samples, comprising 10 samples each of above three drugs, were obtained and analyzed with the soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA) pattern recognition technique. The result showed that the three kinds of drug samples located in three different clusters separately. As a result, it was demonstrated that the macroscopic IR fingerprint method could discriminate the three similar TCM, CCP, CC and CCD, rapidly, effectively and non-destructively.