Comprehensive Quality Assessment Of Different Varieties Of Epimedium Herb

There are about 40 Epimedium species spread in China and 15 of them circulate in the crude drug markets. It's difficult to distinguish different species only according to their physical appearances. In our study, qualitative and quantitative determination by HPLC coupled with TOF-MS and TRAP-MSn were applied to develop a specific and valid fingerprint analysis approach for comprehensive quality assessment of Yinyanghuo. Meanwhile, some physical and chemical tests were also carried out.18 samples of the 5 species belonged to Chinese Pharmacopoeia and 5 samples of other species, as well as root and stem samples were analysed. There were significant differences in HPLC fingerprint among different species, especially different parts of one sample. HPLC-TOF-MS was employed to get accurate molecular weight and possible formula, HPLC-TRAP-MSn was applied to analyse the fragmentation mechanism.18 compounds were identified compared with standard reference substance and literature, most of them were characteristic prenylated flavonoids. Meanwhile, the contents of five main flavonoids, epimedin A, epimedin B, epimedin C, icariin and baohuoside I were determined simultaneously.Epimedin A, epimedin C, icariin in samples was measured by TLC. Some physical and chemical tests such as content of H2O, total ash, acid-insoluble ash, EtOH extract and total flavonoids were also carried out to investigate the quality.Quantitative analysis of multi-components by internal reference (QAMIR) was taken out, with icariin as internal standard, the relative correction factors (RCF) of icariin to epimedin A, epimedin B, epimedin C were calculated and relative retention time were applied to target the 3 compounds. There were no significant differences between the quantitative results by external standard method and QAMIR method. The RCF was suitable on different instruments and columns.