Jun Jiang^{1, 2}, Yingjie Wei^{1, 2}, Xiaobin Jia^{1, 2,}

Coptidis rhizoma and Evodiae fructus could be compatible with different proportions, which composed of a series of prescriptions, including Zuojinwan (ZJW), Biantongwan (BTW), Ganlusan (GLS), Zhuyuwan (ZYW), and Fanzuojinwan (FZJW). Eight bioactive compounds, chlorogenic acid (1), jatrorrhizine (2), coptisine (3), palmatin (4), berberine (5), evodin (6), evodiamine (7), and rutaecarpine (8), were the main active ingredients in Coptidis rhizome - Evodiae fructus composition. In this paper, above 8 compounds were determined simultaneously in 105 batches of samples by high performance liquid chromatography tandem diode array detector (HPLC-DAD), in which 23 batches of BTW, 14 batches of ZYW, 23 batches of GLS, 20 batches of FZJW, 25 batches of ZJW, and 5 batches of ZJW preparations (ZJWps) were included. All calibration curves showed good linear regression (r2 > 0.9970), good precision, and accuracy with overall intra and inter-day variations of 0.54-1.58% and 0.54-2.07%, respectively, and the overall recoveries of 98.05-100.86%. Subsequently, the principal component analysis (PCA) was used to evaluate and distinguish ZJW, GLS, ZYW, BTW, FZJW and ZJWps according to the contents of the detected 8 active ingredients. Through the PCA analysis, 5 kinds of prescriptions could be dispersed in different areas, and there was no intersection among them. Unexpectedly, 5 batches of ZJWps deviated from the scatters region belonged to ZJW, which indicated that there were some quality problems in ZJWps. This method could be applied to detect and distinguish Coptidis rhizome-Evodiae fructus prescriptions.

Zuojinwan, Biantongwan, Zhuyuwan, Ganlusan, Fanzuojinwan, Coptidis rhizoma-Evodiae fructus, HPLC-DAD, chemometrics analysis