No abstract

As a sort of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), snake sloughs have been proved to be effective in curing miscellaneous diseases such as pruritus, muscular spasm and laryngalgia. However, there are few researches on their chemical components, especially the discriminant analysis based on different species. In this study, the liposoluble constituents in sloughs of five species of snakes (Deinagkistrodon, Elaphe carinata, Naja atra, Ptyas mucosus and Zaocys dhumnades) were revealed by comparative evaluation on GC-MS analysis that fatty acids (49.89%-54.65%) and steroids (13.55%-24.98%) were their major components. Moreover, the content of polyunsaturated fatty acids was found by cluster analysis to be the key index to distinguish the quality of a snake slough. It could be concluded that the slough of Naja atra be more appropriate to be a raw material of traditional Chinese medicines. It was also concluded that the GC-MS based method as well as the experimental results could be of referential value for further studies on the efficiency and activities of snake sloughs.