Si-Mo-Tang（SMT） oral liquid preparation, a traditional Chinese medicine, was prepared from four crude herbal drugs, Fructus Aurantii Submaturus, Radix Aucklandiae, Semen Arecae and Radix Linderae Aggregatae. A combinative method using HPLC fingerprint and quantitative analysis was developed and validated for quality consistency evaluation of SMT. Individual HPLC chromatograms were evaluated against the mean chromatogram generated via a similarity evaluation computer program. Data from chromatographic fingerprints were also processed with principal component analysis（PCA） and hierarchical cluster analysis（HCA）. Additionally, six components （naringin, isonaringin, hesperidin, neohesperidin, norisoboldine and potassium sorbate） in SMT were simultaneously determined to interpret the quality consistency. For fingerprint analysis, 20 peaks were selected as the characteristic peaks to evaluate the similarities of 26 SMT collected from different manufacturers. Among the 20 characteristic peaks, 10 peaks were assigned to be naringin, hesperidin, neohesperidin, isonaringin, neoeriocitrin, tangeretin, nobiletin, norisoboldine, 5-（ethoxymethyl）furan-2-carbaldehyde and potassium sorbate, respectively. The results of similarity analysis, PCA and HCA, indicate that the samples from different manufacturers were consistent with each other in composition. The results from the quantitative data show that the contents of six compounds were significantly different in SMT oral liquid preparations from different manufacturers. The combinative method of chromatographic fingerprint with quantitative analysis developed here offered an efficient way for the quality consistency evaluation of the traditional Chinese medicine SMT.
YI Yue-nengCHENG Xue-meiLIU Ling-anHU Gao-yunCAI Guang-xianDEN G Yi-deHUANG Ke-longWANG Chang-hong
