Determination and quality evaluation of six components in Zhou's Prescription through quantitative analysis of multi-components by single marker

Zhou's Prescription is a compound prescription with traditional Chinese medicine, which is composed of 13 kinds of herbs and has been used to treat lung cancer in clinical practice for many years in China. Quantitative analysis of multi-components with single marker (QAMS) was used for the first time to analyze Zhou's Prescription for the mass contents of six active ingredients, and chemometric methods were applied to evaluate its quality. Quercetin was selected as the internal standard serving as basis for relative correction factors (RCFs) determined using different HPLC instruments and columns. The contents of the active ingredients hydroxysafflor yellow A, rutin, hyperoside, isoquercitrin and quercitrin were calculated applying the RCFs. The stability and accuracy of QAMS were tested and verified by an external standard method (ESM). The accuracy was between 94.5 % and 100.4 % demonstrating the consistency of QAMS and ESM. Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to classify 21 batches of Zhou's Prescription which were composed with supplies of the 13 herbs from different harvests at different producing regions. Among the 21 batches, a significant difference between the contents of the active ingredients was found which can be distinguished by chemometric methods. QAMS proved to be a promising and accurate method to quantify the active ingredients in Zhou's Prescription also when resources of reference substances are limited. Moreover, the quality of Zhou's Prescription is determined by the content of active ingredients scaled by HPLC. The method is based on QAMS combined with HCA and PCA to comprehensively evaluate the quality of Zhou's Prescription composed of herbs of different sources.