Sun Mengmeng, Wang Shengpeng, Jing Yong, Li Li, He Min, Jia Yusheng, van Wijk Eduard, Wang Yitao, Wang Zhihong, Wang Mei
1Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, No. 1035, Boshuo Rd, Jingyue Economic Development District, Changchun, 130117 China.
2Leiden University-European Center for Chinese Medicine and Natural Compounds, Institute of Biology, Leiden University, Sylviusweg 72, Leiden, 2333 BE The Netherlands.
Chin Med. 2019 Oct 28;14:47. doi: 10.1186/s13020-019-0269-2. eCollection 2019.
Herbal materials are widely used as medicinal products, dietary supplements, food, and spices. With increased consumption, the safety, quality, and efficacy of herbal materials are becoming more relevant. The authenticity of herbal materials plays an important role in herbal quality control, and there is an urgent need to develop a simple, direct, objective, rapid, and inexpensive measurement tool for the identification of herbal materials for the purpose of quality control.
Delayed luminescence (DL) was used to measure authentic and counterfeit herbal materials. A hyperbolic function was used to extract four properties from the DL curves of the herbal materials. Statistical tools, including Student's test and Principal Component Analysis, were used to differentiate authentic and counterfeit herbal materials based on the DL properties.
Our results showed that authentic and counterfeit herbal materials could be identified based on the DL properties as follows: (a) authentic versus counterfeit materials; (b) authentic versus adulterated materials; (c) authentic versus sulfur-fumigated materials; as well as (d) authentic versus dyed materials.
The simple, direct, rapid, and inexpensive measurements offered by DL potentially offer a novel technique for the identification of Chinese herbal materials. However, the establishment of a valid database will be the next step toward the possible application of this technique, which would contribute significantly to the development of a novel digital tool for the quality control of herbal materials.
草药材料被广泛用作药品、膳食补充剂、食品和香料。随着消费量的增加，草药材料的安全性、质量和功效变得愈发重要。草药材料的真伪在草药质量控制中起着重要作用，因此迫切需要开发一种简单、直接、客观、快速且廉价的测量工具，用于鉴定草药材料以进行质量控制。
采用延迟发光（DL）来测量正品和假冒草药材料。使用双曲线函数从草药材料的DL曲线中提取四个特性。运用包括学生t检验和主成分分析在内的统计工具，基于DL特性区分正品和假冒草药材料。
我们的结果表明，基于DL特性可以鉴定正品和假冒草药材料，如下所示：（a）正品与假冒材料；（b）正品与掺假材料；（c）正品与硫磺熏蒸材料；以及（d）正品与染色材料。
DL提供的简单、直接、快速且廉价的测量方法可能为鉴定中药材提供一种新技术。然而，建立一个有效的数据库将是该技术可能应用的下一步，这将极大地有助于开发一种用于草药材料质量控制的新型数字工具。
