1.2.4 Chemical Standardization and Quality Control of Herbal Medicines
Substitute or counterfeit herbal materials are often found in the market. Even for the right species, the chemical composition and concentrations of bioactive compounds may vary dramatically with different collection seasons and regions as well as storage. Therefore, it is necessary to chemically standardize the herbal extracts or products for biological, pharmacological, and clinical studies.
The complex composition of herbal medicines makes the quality control of herbal products much more complicated. With the increase in knowledge about the bioactive and main compounds in most of the commonly used herbs and the popular application of various analytical instruments such as HPLC, equipped with UV, MS, and other detectors, fingerprint chromatograms are becoming powerful qualitative and quantitative methods for standardization of herbal medicines. Such standardization is not only necessary for quality control of final herbal products, but also important to guide the species collection and cultivation, as well as the optimization of the processing procedure.
Soure: Traditional Herbal Medicine Research Methods, Edited by Willow J.H. Liu Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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