Fingerprinting of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge by non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis compared with high-speed counter-current chromatography.

The component of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) can be influenced by soil, climate, and growth stage, and fingerprint is an important means in its quality control. Our previous studies showed that high-speed counter-current chromatography (HSCCC) was helpful in the development of fingerprint of TCM. Since the HSCCC method is new, it is necessary to compare it with conventional ones, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and high-performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE). Comparison with HPLC was conducted in our previous study. In this study, HSCCC was compared with non-aqueous capillary electrophoresis (NACE). With NACE, seven stable components were separated within 55 min, respectively, from three crude samples of Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge from different growth locations. In HSCCC separation, 12 components were separated, respectively, with good correspondence and precision within 13 h. Both NACE and HSCCC were effective in showing whole concentration distribution of all kinds of constituents. Principles of these two methods were very different, which led to different elution sequences and relative contents of peaks. HSCCC showed better performance in analysis of tanshinones, which made its fingerprint containing more chemical information than that of NACE. It was further proven that HSCCC could be a feasible and cost-effective method in the development of the fingerprint of TCM.