A widely used herbal medicine, Ixeris sonchifolia (Bge.) Hance Injectable (ISHI) was investigated for quality consistency. Characteristic fingerprints of 23 batches of the ISHI samples were generated at five wavelengths and evaluated by the systematic quantitative fingerprint method (SQFM) as well as simultaneous analysis of the content of seven marker compounds. Chemometric methods, i.e., support vector machine (SVM) and principal component analysis (PCA) were performed to assist in fingerprint evaluation of the ISHI samples. Qualitative classification of the ISHI samples by SVM was consistent with PCA, and in agreement with the quantitative evaluation by SQFM. In addition, the antioxidant activities of the ISHI samples were determined by both the off-line and on-line DPPH (2, 2-diphenyl-1-picryldrazyl) radical scavenging assays. A fingerprint–efficacy relationship linking the chemical components and in vitro antioxidant activity was established and validated using the partial least squares (PLS) and orthogonal projection to latent structures (OPLS) models; and the online DPPH assay further revealed those components that had position contribution to the total antioxidant activity. Therefore, the combined use of the chemometric methods, quantitative fingerprint evaluation by SQFM, and multiple marker compound analysis in conjunction with the assay of antioxidant activity provides a powerful and holistic approach to evaluate quality consistency of herbal medicines and their preparations.

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A novel averagely linear-quantified fingerprint method was proposed and successfully applied to monitor the quality consistency of alkaloids in powdered poppy capsule extractive. Averagely linear-quantified fingerprint method provided accurate qualitative and quantitative similarities for chromatographic fingerprints of Chinese herbal medicines. The stability and operability of the averagely linear-quantified fingerprint method were verified by the parameter r. The average linear qualitative similarity SL (improved based on conventional qualitative "Similarity") was used as a qualitative criterion in the averagely linear-quantified fingerprint method, and the average linear quantitative similarity PL was introduced as a quantitative one. PL was able to identify the difference in the content of all the chemical components. In addition, PL was found to be highly correlated to the contents of two alkaloid compounds (morphine and codeine). A simple flow injection analysis was developed for the determination of antioxidant capacity in Chinese Herbal Medicines, which was based on the scavenging of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl radical by antioxidants. The fingerprint-efficacy relationship linking chromatographic fingerprints and antioxidant activities was investigated utilizing orthogonal projection to latent structures method, which provided important pharmacodynamic information for Chinese herbal medicines quality control. In summary, quantitative fingerprinting based on averagely linear-quantified fingerprint method can be applied for monitoring the quality consistency of Chinese herbal medicines, and the constructed orthogonal projection to latent structures model is particularly suitable for investigating the fingerprint-efficacy relationship.

Introduction Compound liquorice tablet (CLT) is a herbal compound preparation and is used as a classic antitussive and expectorant in China. It is composed of liquorice extract powder, opioid powder, star anise oil, camphor, and sodium benzoate. The complexity of herbal materials brings a huge challenge in producing compound preparations with stable and uniform quality consistency. Objective To establish a new intelligent model for predicting the quality of CLT. Methods The HPLC fingerprints of raw materials including liquorice extract powder, powdered opium, star anise oil, and sodium benzoate were tested and merged to generate the intelligent mergence fingerprints, whose correlation with the raw materials and the CLT samples was studied. The consistency of the intelligently merged fingerprints with the standard fingerprints was observed by using the systematic quantitative fingerprint method in order to calculate quality evaluation results. Results The intelligent mergence fingerprints covered all the main fingerprint peaks of four raw materials and had a good correlation with the CLT sample fingerprint. There were no significant quality differences either among the six intelligent mergence models obtained by combining different batches of raw materials or between the reference fingerprint of the intelligent mergence connection fingerprints (RFPIMFC) and the theoretical standard preparation (RFPS). Conclusion The computer‐aided model of intelligent mergence fingerprints could be used to predict the quality of herbal compound preparations based on raw materials. In this way, preproduction quality prediction can be realised in order to avoid low‐quality medicinal materials and improve the quality consistency among different batches.

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