Comparative Analysis of Ultrafine Granular Powder and Decoction Pieces of Salvia miltiorrhiza by UPLC-UV-MSn Combined with Statistical Analysis.

Salvia miltiorrhiza is one of the most used herbal medicines for the treatment of a wide range of diseases in China. Decoction pieces and Chinese patent medicines from S. miltiorrhiza are the two main types of products used by patients. Other relatively new products of S. miltiorrhiza, like injections and ultrafine granular powder (D90 < 45 µm before granulation), are also increasingly used nowadays. With the growing usage of new products of S. miltiorrhiza, their chemical components and pharmacological effects, compared to the traditional decoction pieces, are attracting attention. In this work, the chemical profiles of two types of products from S. miltiorrhiza (one is traditional "decoction pieces", the other is modern "ultrafine granular powder") were compared via similarity analysis and discriminated via multivariate analysis, e.g., hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and partial least squares discrimination analysis. A new adamantane stationary phase column was used to establish informative chemical profiles of them. The mean similarity correlation coefficient (> 0.987) revealed that ultrafine granular powder and decoction pieces of S. miltiorrhiza were consistent between each other and stable between different batches. Two types of S. miltiorrhiza products were clearly resolved from each other by hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis, and partial least squares discrimination analysis. Compounds responsible for the discrimination results were further characterized by ESI-MS/MS. Eventually, 62 compounds selected as characteristic markers for evaluation were characterized or tentatively characterized. This result will facilitate the further comparison of these two types of S. miltiorrhiza products in pharmacology and pharmacokinetics. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.