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Background. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used all over the world and has shown its superiority in some diseases. However, there are no clear evaluation criteria for TCM. In 2019, a list of TCM dominant diseases was published by the Chinese National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This study aimed to systematically summarize the characteristics of 95 TCM dominant diseases and provide a reference for the establishment of evaluation criteria for TCM dominant diseases. Methods. The diagnosis and treatment protocols of all the 95 TCM dominant diseases were screened. The data of disease classification, diseases' code of TCM, length of hospital stay, treatment protocols, and clinical pathways were reviewed and summarized. Results. The diseases of the genitourinary and nervous systems accounted for 14.74% and 12.73% of the TCM dominant diseases, respectively. The length of hospital stay for 55 (57.89%) diseases was no more than less than 14 days. Each disease had its specific Chinese herbal decoction pieces and Chinese patent drugs. Chinese medical injections were not widely used. TCM external treatments for these diseases are abundant, with hundreds optional. Conclusion. Some potentially promising TCM dominant diseases remain to be identified and deserve further research to establish the evaluation criteria of TCM dominant diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Dingji Fumai Decoction (DFD), a traditional herbal mixture, has been widely used to ventricular arrhythmia (VA) in clinical practice in China. However, research on the bioactive components and underlying mechanisms of DFD in VA is still scarce. Methods. Components of DFD were collected from TCMSP, ETCM, and literature. The chemical structures of each component were obtained from PubChem. Next, SwissADME and SwissTargetPrediction were applied for compounds screening and targets prediction of DFD; meanwhile, targets of VA were collected from DrugBank and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). Then, the H-C-T-D network and the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network were constructed based on the data obtained above. CytoNCA was utilized to filter hub genes and VarElect was used to analyze the relationship between genes and diseases. At last, Metascape was employed for systematic analysis on the potential targets of herbals against VA, and AutoDock was applied for molecular docking to verify the results. Results. A total of 434 components were collected, 168 of which were qualified, and there were 28 shared targets between DFD and VA. Three function modules of DFD were found from the PPI network. Further systematic analysis of shared genes and function modules explained the potential mechanism of DFD in the treatment of VA; molecular docking has verified the interactions. Conclusions. DFD could be employed for VA through mechanisms, including complex interactions between related components and targets, as predicted by network pharmacology and molecular docking. This work confirmed that DFD could apply to the treatment of VA and promoted the explanation of DFD for VA in the molecular mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) bring a great challenge in quality control and evaluating the efficacy because of their complexity of chemical composition. Chemometric techniques provide a good opportunity for mining more useful chemical information from TCMs. Then, the application of chemometrics in the field of TCMs is spontaneous and necessary. This review focuses on the recent various important chemometrics tools for chromatographic fingerprinting, including peak alignment information features, baseline correction and applications of chemometrics in metabolomics and modernization of TCMs, including authentication and evaluation of the quality of TCMs, evaluating the efficacy of TCMs and essence of TCM syndrome. In the conclusions, the general trends and some recommendations for improving chromatographic metabolomics data analysis are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was carried out to investigate chemical components and therapeutic effects on hepatic fibrosis of Danggui Buxue Decoction (DBD) in rabbits. The chemical components of DBD were analyzed by LC-DAD-MS. Schistosomiasis hepatic fibrosis was employed as models of hepatic fibrosis. The rabbits were divided into treatment and control groups. DBD was orally administered at a dose of 50g/kg rabbit's weight in treatment group. We evaluated the therapeutic effects of DBD on hepatic fibrosis in rabbits using B-ultrasound images, histopathologic examination, and hyaluronic acid content in serum. The results indicated that DBD had good therapeutic effects for hepatic fibrosis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The volatile chemical constituents of Artemisia capillaries (an important traditional Chinese medicine) were determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and sub-window factor analysis (SFA). Seventy-five components were separated and 43 of them were qualitatively and quantitatively determined, which represented about 89.03% of the total content. This profile was then used to identify and assess the consistency of the herb by using an orthogonal projection method. Four different sources of A. capillaries were analyzed and compared with each other. Among the components determined, there were 51 components coexisting in all samples although the relative peak areas of a few showed variations. It is the first time to apply orthogonal projection method to the comparison of different samples, and it reduces the burden of qualitative analysis as well as the subjectivity. The results showed a fair consistency in their GC–MS fingerprint. A. capillaris was distinguished from Artemisia sacrorum L., a possible substitute in traditional Chinese medicine by comparing the fingerprints with each other. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The volatile chemical constituents in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Artemisia capillaris herba, were determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The acquired two-dimensional data were resolved by correlative chemometric resolution methods. The noise in the raw data is pretreated by roughness penalty smoothing method. With the data denoised, heteroscedastic noise and signal-to-noise ratio were decreased apparently, which was favorable to the determination of component number. The selective range can be extracted from rankmap obtained by fixed size moving window evolving factor analysis (FSMWEFA) conveniently. The overlapped chromatographic peaks were resolved into pure chromatograms and pure spectra with evolving window orthogonal projection (EWOP). The purity of the resolved pure spectra were improved furthermore with the heteroscedastic noise decreased through roughness penalty smoothing method, although the basic structure of the raw data changes little. Qualitative analysis was performed by similarity search in NIST147 and Willey library. Pure chromatograms are in favor of quantitative analysis, which was obtained by total volume integration. Forty-two of seventy-five separated constituents in essential oil, accounting for 89.03% of the total content, were identified. The result proves the combined approaches to be powerful for the analysis of complex herbal samples. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The qualitative and quantitative determination of the chemical constitutes in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an important task, which builds the foundation of the theory of pharmacological activity. The hyphenated chromatography instruments combined with the related chemometric methods provide powerful tools for the resolution of such complex systems. The familiar chemometrics methods can be roughly divided into two different kinds, the iterative one such as orthogonal projection approach (OPA) and non-iterative one representing by evolving window orthogonal projection (EWOP). One can use different kinds of methods according to overlapping condition, and then the measured data matrix can be resolved into pure concentration profiles and mass spectra of the chemical components with relative high efficiency and acceptable accuracy. One kind of TCM, named Notoptergium incium (NI) was analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) and resolved by above chemometric approach. Experiment results show the efficiency and convenience of the proposed approach. 65 of the 98 separated constituents in essential oil, accounting for 92.13%, were identified by mass spectroscopy (MS). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Herba Siegesbeckiae, mainly includes Sigesbeckia orientalis L, Sigesbeckiae pubescens Makino and Sigesbeckiae glabrescens Makino. Herba Siegesbeckiae, also known as 'Xi-Xian Cao' (Chinese: 豨莶草), has been regarded as an important traditional Chinese medicine since Tang dynasty. The dried aerial parts of Herba Siegesbeckiae are also being used as a herbal medicine in many countries such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam. In China, Herba Siegesbeckiae has been used for the treatment of rheumatic arthralgia with aching and weakness of loins and knees, as well as numbness of limbs. The aim of this review was to provide critical analysis on the scientific evidence to support the traditional uses of Herba Siegesbeckiae. The information available on its in botanical characteristics, traditional uses, chemical constituents, pharmacological activities, clinical studies, toxicity and quality control was summarized to understand the current research and provided the leas for future study. The search terms "Herba Siegesbeckiae", " Sigesbeckia orientalis ", " Sigesbeckia pubscens " and " Sigesbeckia glabrescens " were used to obtain the information from electronic databases such as Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, PubMed, Google Scholar and SciFinder Scholar and other web search instruments (Springer, Yahoo search). The information provided in this review was based on peer-reviewed papers in English and Chinese. Besides, information was also collected from ancient documents. The studies showed that Herba Siegesbeckiae contains sesquiterpenoids, diterpenoids, flavonoids and organic acids, etc. Due to these constituents, it displayed numerous pharmacological activities, such as anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antiallergic, antioxidant, antithrombotic and antibacterial activities. In addition, it showed effects in protecting myocardial and cerebral ischemia injury. According to its traditional uses, chemical constituents, pharmacological activities and clinic studies, Herba Siegesbeckiae is regarded as a promising medical plant with various chemical compounds and numerous pharmacological activities. However, fewer experimental studies were focused on toxicity and quantitative study of 3 species. It suggested that further in-depth study of toxicity and quality control were critical for future evaluation of drug efficacy and safety. [Display omitted] • This is the first review to summarize the studies of traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology of Herba Siegesbeckiae (HS). • Traditional uses of HS, covering 13 TCM classics and 9 traditional uses containing HS, were presented in the form of Table. • All known chemical constituents isolated from HS and their chemical structures were enumerated in this review. • The clinical curative effects of HS were discussed in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salvia plebeia R. Br. (SP), has been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It contains a number of chemical components and reported to possess a variety of pharmacological activities. SP is distributed in many countries such as China, Korea, Japan, Afghanistan and India. SP was first described in Compendium of Materia Medica in the Ming dynasty. The aim of this review is to compile all the information reported in the literature on SP. This review covers traditional uses, including 16 TCM classics and 21 traditional prescriptions; a total of 93 compounds from SP have been reported, including flavonoids, monoterpenoids, sesquiterpenoids, diterpenoids, triterpenes, phenolic acids etc; biological actives such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, hypoglycaemic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, sedative, antiasthmatic, antiviral, antitumour, hepatoprotective effects etc. In addition, this paper also compiled the quality control studies and clinical applications. The future prospects and the existing problems of SP were also discussed. Overall, we believe this review will be a comprehensive record of SP for researchers to refer for carrying out for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Fructus arctii (F. arctii) is the dried ripe fruit of Arctium lappa Willd (Asteraceae). It is being used as a traditional medicine in China, Japan, Iran, Europe, Afghanistan, India, etc. for cough, inflammation, clearing the heat, detoxification, cancer and diabetes. This review summarized the botanical description, distribution, ethnopharmacology, bioactive constituents and pharmacological actions of F. arctii including methods to assess its quality. In addition, this review also provides insights into future research directions on F. arctii to further explore its bioactive constituents, mechanism involved in pharmacological activity, and clinical use including the development of new analytical methods for assessing the quality. Key findings: The comprehensive analysis of the literature revealed that F. arctii contains lignans, volatile oil, flavonoids, sesquiterpenoids, triterpenes, phenolic acids, etc. Experimental studies on various extracts and drug formulations showed that it has antioxidant, antimicrobial, hypoglycaemic, lipid-lowering, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antiviral, anti-tumour activity, etc. Summary: The pharmacological activity of a few major constituents in F. arctii have been identified. However, there are still need more studies and more new technologies to prove the pharmacological activity and the effective mechanism of the other constituents that undergoing uncertain. Except for the animal experiments, clinical studies should be carried out to provide the evidence for clinical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Tangerine peels are herbal materials of two coupled traditional Chinese medicines, Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae (PCR) and Pericarpium Citri Reticulatae Viride (PCRV). In this paper, high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprints of tangerine peels during growth were firstly measured for deliberately collected 34 samples from three species (Citrus reticulata ‘Chachi’, Citrus reticulata ‘Dahongpao’ and Citrus erythrosa Tanaka). After sixteen characteristic components which have similar change trends in the grown process were screened out with the help of heuristic evolving latent projection (HELP) method, score plots of principal component analysis (PCA) successfully presented the grown footprints of tangerine peels. It implied that July might be the best harvest time for PCRV, November and December were better for PCR. Furthermore, hesperidin, nobiletin and tangeretin were screened as chemical markers by loadings of PCA. The HPLC–HELP–PCA strategy has shown its potential in optimization of harvest time and chemical markers’ screening, which will have wide perspective in the analysis of “coupled TCMs”. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Traditional Chinese medicines have been used for thousands of years and are still being used as one of the regular treatments for many diseases. However, their mechanisms were still unknown. In this investigation, a possible procedure combining metabonomics and principal component analysis to investigate antibacterial modes of action and find main antimicrobial component in traditional Chinese medicine, Aquilegia oxysepala, is developed. Metabolic profiles of Staphylococcus aureus treated with nine antibiotics of known modes of action and with A. oxysepala were acquired by HPLC/DAD/ESI-MS. After statistical processing by principal components analysis on metabolic profiles, two conclusions could be drawn: (1) the target of A. oxysepala may be similar to that of lincolmensin, erythromycin, chloromycetin, streptomycin, and acheomycin, whose targets are protein; (2) its bioactive component playing main antimicrobial roles on S. aureus may be maguoflorine. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The diagnosis of elution chromatographic patterns, being a vital step in chromatographic analysis, builds fundamental ingredient for later curve resolution or fitting. Many conventional multivariate resolution methods usually hold the hypothesis that the component, which appears first, will disappear first in the resolution of chromatographic systems. However, in real systems, such elution pattern is not always true. In this paper, a new method, named sectional moving window factor analysis (SMWFA), was proposed to diagnose the elution pattern of each chromatogram without any additional assumptions. The presented method was fast, friendly and helpful for automatic resolution of hyphenated chromatographic data. The performance of analyzed results in crude oil and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) systems showed its efficiency of the proposed method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Nine compounds were successfully separated from Salvia plebeia R.Br. using two-step high-speed counter-current chromatography with three elution modes. Elution-extrusion counter-current chromatography was applied in the first step, while classical counter-current chromatography and recycling counter-current chromatography were used in the second step. Three solvent systems, n-hexane/ethyl acetate/ethanol/water (4:6.5:3:7, v/v), methyl tert-butyl ether/ethyl acetate/ n-butanol/methanol/water (6:4:1:2:8, v/v) and n-hexane/ethyl acetate/methanol/water (5:5.5:5:5, v/v) were screened and optimized for the two-step separation. The separation yielded nine compounds, including caffeic acid ( 1), 6-hydroxyluteuolin-7-glucoside ( 2), 5,7,3′,4′-tetrahydroxy-6-methoxyflavanone-7-glucoside ( 3), nepitrin ( 4), rosmarinic acid ( 5), homoplantaginin ( 6), nepetin ( 7), hispidulin ( 8), and 5,6,7,4′-tertrahydroxyflavone ( 9). To the best of our knowledge, 5,7,3′,4′-tetrahydroxy-6-methoxyflavanone-7-glucoside and 5,6,7,4′-tertrahydroxyflavone have been separated from Salvia plebeia R.Br. for the first time. The purities and structures of these compounds were identified by high-performance liquid chromatography, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy. This study demonstrates that high-speed counter-current chromatography is a useful and flexible tool for the separation of components from a complex sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) is the most common method to construct a fingerprint analysis for quality control of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, many polar compounds in TCM nearly have no retention at RPLC mode. Therefore, it is inadequate for the quality control of TCM. In this study, an approach was proposed to develop chromatographic fingerprints by means of RPLC and hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) to gain more chemical information about polar compounds and weakly polar compounds from seed embryo of Nelumbo nucifera GAERTN (SENN). The two chromatographic methods demonstrated good precision, repeatability, and stability, with relative standard deviations of <2% for retention time and 7% for peak area. Different chemical information regarding the same sample can be obtained by two chromatographic modes. Similarity analysis of 19 samples showed a fair consistence, but the similarities of samples in HILIC mode were relatively lower than in RPLC mode. Combination use of the two chromatographic fingerprints can comprehensively and properly reveal the quality characteristics of the SENN. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Cordyceps sinensis (Cs) is a well-known traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Cordyceps mycelia (Cm), a cultured Cordyceps, is a substitute for Cordyceps sinensis. The most important active components in them are nucleosides. A high selective, sensitive and accurate high performance liquid chromatography method with photodiode array detection (DAD) and mass spectrometric detection has been developed for simultaneous separation, identification and quantification of nucleosides in Cs and Cm using a mobile phase including (A) ammonium acetate (40mM, pH 5.2) and (B) methanol with a gradient system on a 2.0mm×150mm Shimadzu VP-ODS column. The presence of each nucleoside in Cs and Cm was ascertained by comparison of MS data, UV spectra and retention time with standards. LC/ESI-MS in selective ion monitoring (SIM) mode were used for the quantification of nucleosides in Cs and Cm. 2-Chloroadenosine was used as internal standard for this assay. The precisions and accuracies were in the range of 1.5–5.3% and −3.5 to 5.0%, respectively. The limits of detection and quantification for nucleosides were in the order of 0.1–0.6μgml−1 and 0.5–2.0μgml−1, respectively. The recoveries were in the range of 92.0–107.0%. With the developed method, the concentrations of nucleosides in Cs and Cm from different sources were determined. Cs, characterized with far lower concentration of adenosine and cordycepin than Cm, can be very easy to distinguish from Cm. This reliable method would be useful for the study and quality control of Cordyceps sinensis and its substitutes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]