Department of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Department of Pharmaceutics, College of Pharmacy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA.
Planta Med. 2022 Nov;88(14):1348-1359. doi: 10.1055/a-1708-1994. Epub 2021 Nov 28.
There are several forms of kava () products available for human consumption, and many factors are known to influence their chemical compositions and therefore their pharmacological properties. Because of the increased popularity of kava intake, a rigorous characterization of their content diversity is prerequisite, particularly due to its known potential to cause hepatotoxicity. To understand the composition diversity of kavalactones and flavokavains in commercial kava products, we developed a UPLC-MS/MS-based analytical method for the quantification of six kavalactones (kavain, dihydrokavain, methysticin, dihydromethysticin, yangonin and desmethoxyyangonin) and two flavokavains (flavokavains A and B) and analyzed their contents in 28 different kava products in the form of capsules, tinctures, traditional aqueous suspensions and dried powders. Our results demonstrated a great variation in terms of the total and relative abundance of the analyzed kavalactones and flavokavains among the analyzed kava preparations. More importantly, the kavalactone abundance in the product label could differ up to 90% from our experimental measurements. Therefore, more rigorous and comprehensive quality control of kava products is required with respect to the content of individual kavalactones and flavokavains. Accurate content information is essential to understand the pharmacological properties and safety of different kava products.
市面上有几种可食用的卡瓦（kava）产品，已知许多因素会影响其化学成分，进而影响其药理特性。由于卡瓦摄入的普及度不断提高，对其成分多样性进行严格的特征描述是先决条件，尤其是因为其已知的潜在肝毒性。为了了解商业卡瓦产品中卡瓦内酯和黄烷酮的组成多样性，我们开发了一种基于 UPLC-MS/MS 的分析方法，用于定量测定六种卡瓦内酯（卡瓦酮、二氢卡瓦酮、甲氧基卡瓦酮、二氢甲氧基卡瓦酮、延胡索乙素和去甲氧基延胡索乙素）和两种黄烷酮（黄烷酮 A 和 B），并分析了 28 种不同卡瓦产品（胶囊、酊剂、传统水混悬液和干粉末）中的含量。我们的研究结果表明，分析的卡瓦内酯和黄烷酮在不同卡瓦制剂中的总含量和相对丰度存在很大差异。更重要的是，产品标签上的卡瓦内酯含量与我们的实验测量值最多可相差 90%。因此，需要对各个卡瓦内酯和黄烷酮的含量进行更严格、更全面的卡瓦产品质量控制。准确的含量信息对于理解不同卡瓦产品的药理特性和安全性至关重要。
