Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1172 Blindern, 0318, Oslo, Norway.
NIRDBS/"Stejarul" Research Centre for Biological Sciences, Alexandru cel Bun Street, 6, 610004, Piatra, Neamt, Romania.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 2;7(1):1291. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-01389-w.
Many herbal products have a long history of use, but there are increasing concerns over product efficacy, safety and quality in the wake of recent cases exposing discrepancies between labeling and constituents. When it comes to St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum L.) herbal products, there is limited oversight, frequent off-label use and insufficient monitoring of adverse drug reactions. In this study, we use amplicon metabarcoding (AMB) to authenticate 78 H. perforatum herbal products and evaluate its ability to detect substitution compared to standard methods using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS). Hypericum perforatum was detected in 68% of the products using AMB. Furthermore, AMB detected incongruence between constituent species and those listed on the label in all products. Neither TLC nor HPLC-MS could be used to unambiguously identify H. perforatum. They are accurate methods for authenticating presence of the target compounds, but have limited efficiency in detecting infrageneric substitution and do not yield any information on other plant ingredients in the products. Random post-marketing AMB of herbal products by regulatory agencies could raise awareness among consumers of substitution and would provide an incentive to manufacturers to increase quality control from raw ingredients to commercialized products.
许多草药产品的使用历史悠久，但最近的一些案例暴露了标签与成分之间的差异，人们越来越关注产品的功效、安全性和质量。在圣约翰草（贯叶金丝桃）草药产品方面，监管有限，经常出现标签外使用，并且对药物不良反应的监测不足。在这项研究中，我们使用扩增子代谢条形码（AMB）来验证 78 种贯叶金丝桃草药产品，并评估其与使用薄层色谱（TLC）和高效液相色谱-质谱联用（HPLC-MS）的标准方法相比检测替代的能力。使用 AMB 检测到 68%的产品中含有贯叶金丝桃。此外，AMB 检测到所有产品的成分物种与标签上列出的物种之间存在不一致。TLC 和 HPLC-MS 均不能明确鉴定贯叶金丝桃的存在。它们是鉴定目标化合物存在的准确方法，但在检测亚属替代方面效率有限，并且不会提供产品中其他植物成分的任何信息。监管机构对草药产品进行随机上市后 AMB 检测可以提高消费者对替代的认识，并促使制造商从原材料到商业化产品增加质量控制。
