Acta Pharm. 63 (2013) 505-515

 

full paper

Original research paper

 

Chemical fingerprinting and quantitative analysis of two common Gleditsia sinensis fruits using HPLC-DAD

Jianping CHEN, Zhonggui Li, KEN Y. Z. ZHENG, AVA J. Y. GUO, KEVIN Y. ZHU, WENDY L. ZHANG, JANIS Y. X. ZHAN, TINA T. X. DONG, Ziren SU and KARL W. K. TSIM

botsim@ust.hk

1 Division of Life Science and Centre for Chinese Medicine, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China

2 School of Health and Pharmacy, Guandong Lingnan Institute of Technology, Guangzhou, China

3 School of Chinese Materia Medica, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China

Accepted September 17, 2013

 

Gleditsiae Fructus Abnormalis and Gleditsiae Sinensis Fructus are obtained from different developmental stages of fruits from Gleditsia sinensis Lam. (Fam. Leguminosae). The possible interchangeable usage of the two fruits, however, has long been very controversial. Here, high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detection was developed to explore their chemical fingerprinting profiles. Besides, the amounts of aglycons of saponin compounds, echinocystic acid and oleanolic acid in both fruits were quantified. The results indicated that there was no significant difference in the amount of aglycons from the two types of fruits; however, their chromatographic fingerprints showed distinct characteristics. Therefore, the interchangeable application of these fruits has to be taken with a specific precaution.

 

Keywords: Gleditsiae Fructus Abnormalis, Gleditsiae Sinensis Fructus, HPLC-DAD, fingerprinting