National Forensic Service, Wonju, Republic of Korea.
Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2022 Jul;39(7):1195-1205. doi: 10.1080/19440049.2022.2069291. Epub 2022 Apr 29.
, a popular medicinal herb in Korea, is locally called Danggui; this name is similarly used for and , which are also sold in the retail market. These three herbs have differing therapeutic effects and should be used according to their prescribed purposes. In some retail markets, though, all three herbs are known by the same common name rather than a scientific name and can therefore be confused with each other. In particular, in the case of powdered products, intentional or unintentional wrong sales activity by the seller may occur. In this study, non-targeted analysis was performed using liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry to discriminate between the three herbs, and marker compounds were identified by principal component analysis. Principal component analysis was applied to the whole dataset with the variables being sample name, peak name (m/z with retention time), and ion intensity extracted in advance by peak finding, alignment, and filtering. All three herbs were visually and clearly differentiated in the score plot, and the marker compounds that contributed to their discrimination were found in the loading plot through principal component variable grouping (PCVG). Among the marker compounds, coumarins contributed to the classification of , and phthalides contributed to the classification of . The three herbs were well discriminated from each other. Within the three species investigated, marker compounds can determine the species of even powdered or extracted samples that cannot be visually identified.
, 一种在韩国广受欢迎的药草，在当地被称为当归; 这种名称也同样用于 和 ，它们也在零售市场上出售。这三种草药具有不同的治疗效果，应根据其规定的用途使用。然而，在一些零售市场上，这三种草药都使用相同的通用名称，而不是学名，因此容易混淆。特别是在粉末产品的情况下，卖家可能会有意或无意地进行错误的销售活动。在这项研究中，使用液相色谱四极杆飞行时间质谱进行了非靶向分析，以区分这三种 草药，通过主成分分析鉴定了标记化合物。主成分分析应用于整个数据集，变量包括样品名称、峰名（保留时间的 m/z 和离子强度），通过峰查找、对齐和过滤预先提取。在得分图中，三种草药都可以清晰地区分开来，通过主成分变量分组（PCVG）在加载图中找到了有助于区分的标记化合物。在标记化合物中，香豆素有助于 的分类，而邻苯二甲酸酯有助于 的分类。三种 草药彼此之间得到了很好的区分。在所研究的三种 物种中，标记化合物可以确定即使是无法通过肉眼识别的粉末或提取样品的物种。
