Study On The Relationship Between The Antioxidant Effect Of Loofah

Luffae Fructus Retinervus(LFR),the vascular bundle of Luffa cylindrica(L.)Roem.(Cucurbitaceae),is one of the main exports of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM).It has the effect of wind-dispersing,promoting the circulation of blood,collaterals activating and eliminating mastitis in TCM.For the purpose of quality evaluation in this paper,a simple and efficient approach based on antioxidant fingerprint combining hierarchical clustering analysis(HCA)with similarity analysis was developed for LFR.Firstly,twelve batches of samples of LFR were investigated to establish antioxidant fingerprints by high performance liquid chromatography.The antioxidant activities of these samples were evaluated by 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical scavenging assay and ferric reducing antioxidant power assay.The total phenolic contents were determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu method and total flavonoids contents were estimated using Rutin as the standard.Five characteristic peaks from fingerprints of samples correlated closely with their antioxidant activities by multiple correlation analysis based on EC50 values and peak areas of ten common peaks.Then,the five active peaks were chosen to evaluate the quality of LFR combining with similarity analysis and HCA.The samples with similarities above 0.99 had stronger antioxidant activities and they fell into the same cluster in HCA.Finally,five batches of commercial LFR were processed in the same way to testify the practicability of this method.The results suggested that antioxidant fingerprinting as a characteristic distinguishing method combined with similarity analysis and HCA based on active chromatographic peaks can be successfully to assess the quality of LFR.The established method would also provide a reference to other TCMs for evaluating the quality or identifying the authenticity.