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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) contains a large number of herbal medicine and Chinese patent medicine, each of which contains many compounds that may be relevant to the medicine's putative activity. The homonym and synonym are very popular in TCM for its source complex. How to identify species and control the quality of TCM has become urgent, and fingerprint techniques have now been widely used in TCM for these purposes. In the present paper, four popular fingerprinting techniques (CE, HPLC, GC, and XRD) and their current applications in TCM are reviewed. All these techniques are proved to be an advanced and effective way to get an accurate and integral fingerprint, and each is discussed in detail with examples. CE, HPLC and GC are widely considered as the ideal methods to work out fingerprint analysis. GC is outstanding in analyzing the volatile components and HPLC has advantages in the analysis of the majority of chemical components of TCM. However, because of the complexity of chemical components in TCM, it is very hard for single CE, HPLC or GC to characterize all these components. Hyphenated techniques are strongly recommended for the purpose of quality control of TCM. It is concluded that more rational approach to the authentication and quality assessment of TCM is essential and the fingerprint techniques might be a powerful tool for quality control of TCM in the near future for their unique advantages.

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Eclipta prostrasta L. is a traditional Chinese medicine herb, which is rich in saponins and has strong antiviral and antitumor activities. An ultrasonic-assisted extraction (UAE) technique was developed for the fast extraction of saponins from E. prostrasta. The content of total saponins in E. prostrasta was determined using UV/vis spectrophotometric methods. Several influential parameters like ethanol concentration, extraction time, temperature, and liquid/solid ratio were investigated for the optimization of the extraction using single factor and Box-Behnken experimental designs. Extraction conditions were optimized for maximum yield of total saponins in E. prostrasta using response surface methodology (RSM) with 4 independent variables at 3 levels of each variable. Results showed that the optimization conditions for saponins extraction were: ethanol concentration 70%, extraction time 3 h, temperature 70 °C, and liquid/solid ratio 14:1. Corresponding saponins content was 2.096%. The mathematical model developed was found to fit well with the experimental data. Practical Application: Although there are wider applications of Eclipta prostrasta L. as a functional food or traditional medicine due to its various bioactivities, these properties are limited by its crude extracts. Total saponins are the main active ingredient of E. prostrasta. This research has optimized the extraction conditions of total saponins from E. prostrasta, which will provide useful reference information for further studies, and offer related industries with helpful guidance in practice.