ANALYSIS OF BIOACTIVE FRACTION OF CAULIS STAUNTONIAE BY HPLC FINGERPRINTING

Caulis Stauntoniae, which is used as a folk herbal medicine for its analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties, was adopted in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (ChP) 2010 edition. The chemical studies unveiled numerous triterpenoid saponins being the major ingredients and animal pharmacological tests disclosed the saponins fraction was responsible for the analgesic activity. Therefore, assessing the quality of this herbal drug should rely on the total bioactive fraction (triterpenoid saponins fraction) as the target. Consequently, a suite of bioactive saponins as the accepted characteristic was analyzed by HPLC fingerprint for quality control. In this paper, an HPLC-DAD fingerprint common pattern of saponins fraction was established for species authentication and quality assessment aided by chemometric analysis. Irrespective of the saponins, ChP questionably adopted calceolarioside B, one of phenylethanoid glycosides, as a marker for identification and assay. Irrationality for this was commented in this paper.