Assessment of the quality variance among commercial Hwang-Ryun-Hae-Dok-Tang by simultaneous analysis of characterizing compounds

A study was performed to assess the quality equivalence of commercially available Hwang-Ryun-Hae-Dok-Tang granules from various vendors in terms of the contents of characterizing compounds. 'Hwang-Ryun-Hae-Dok-Tang'(or 'Huanglian Jiedu Tang') is the complex medicinal herbal product which is composed of four different herbal drugs; Scutellariae Radix, Coptidis Rhizoma, Phellodendri Cortex and Gardeniae Fructus. Using a high performance liquid chromatography and direct analysis in real time mass spectrometer (DART-MS), five characterizing compounds such as baicalin, baicalein, berberine, palmatine, and geniposide were analyzed to compare the variance of the contents between the products from four different vendors. Although five characterizing compounds were all successfully detected from all the products, the contents of each compound were shown to have significant difference among vendors. For real time monitoring of characterizing compounds in medicinal herbal products, DART-MS can be successfully adopted as a powerful analytical tool.