Quantitative and qualitative determination of LiuweiDihuang preparations by ultra high performance liquid chromatography in dual-wavelength fingerprinting mode and random forest

The classical traditional Chinese formulation LiuweiDihuang, shown to have clinical efficacy for "nourishing kidney-yin" in traditional Chinese medicine, has been used for thousands of years in China. Little attention, however, has been paid to quality control methods for this formulation. Hence, a rapid and sensitive analytical technique is urgently needed for the evaluation of LiuweiDihuang preparations to assess its quality and pharmacological functionality. In this study, an ultra high performance liquid chromatography dual-wavelength method was developed to simultaneously determine 11 constituents in LiuweiDihuang preparations. This robust approach provided a fast and comprehensive quantitative determination of the major bioactive markers within LiuweiDihuang preparations. To distinguish four dosage forms of LiuweiDihuang preparations, a random forest technique was applied on the spectrometric fingerprint data obtained. This combination approach of chromatographic techniques and data analyses might serve as a rapid and efficient tool to ensure the quality of LiuweiDihuang preparations and other Chinese medicinal formulations and can support quality control and scientific research into the pharmacological potential for these formulations.