[Establishment of quality control model for high performance liquid chromatography fingerprint based on ultraviolet full-wavelength scanning spectrum: case study on different grades of Scrophulariae Radix].

High performance liquid chromatography-ultraviolet(HPLC-UV) fingerprint is one of the most important methods for the quality control of Chinese medicines in Chinese Pharmacopoeia. However, certain subjectivity is present in selection of specific band of UV, and the inherent quality differences of Chinese medicine can't be well characterized by this method. Therefore, with different grades of Scrophulariae Radix were taken as the research object in this study, a new quality control model of HPLC-UV was established in this study based on the ultraviolet full-wavelength scanning spectrum. Firstly, different grades of Scrophulariae Radix samples were collected, and the full-wavelength ultraviolet absorption spectra of all the samples were established at the bands of 200-400 nm. In order to analyze the differences among samples, the analysis model was built following multivariate statistical analysis methods such as principal component analysis(PCA) and partial least squares discrimination analysis(PLS-DA) after the pretreatment of spectral data. The result showed that the ultraviolet band at 251 nm may contribute most to distinguish the quality differences among different grades of samples. Then, the HPLC fingerprints of samples were established with the band at 251 nm. The multivariate statistical analysis showed that there was a more significant classification trend in HPLC fingerprints than that in the original UV fingerprints, which could be used to distinguish different grades of samples, and could better reflect the differences among different grades. The method reported in this study can be of a great guidance and reference for the establishment of specific fingerprints of Chinese medicines as well as for the quality control of Chinese medicine.