Quantitative analysis and chromatographic fingerprinting for the quality evaluation of Forsythia suspensa extract by HPLC coupled with photodiode array detector

A simple and reproducible HPLC-photodiode array detector method has been described for evaluating and controlling quality of Forsythia suspensa extract (FSE). First, by analysis of chromatographic fingerprints, the similarities of chromatograms of FSE samples from the same pharmaceutical company exceeded 0.999, 0.997 and 0.960, respectively, although they were much lower from different pharmaceutical companies. Second, by further comparing many batches of extract chromatograph charts with the corresponding reference herb materials, the "common peaks" 3, 5, 7 and 1.0 were defined as "marker peaks", which were identified as (+)-pinoresinol-beta-D-glucoside, forsythiaside, phillyrin and phillygenin, respectively. Third, four "marker peaks" were simultaneously determined based on fingerprint chromatogram for further controlling the quality of FSE quantitatively. Namely, the newly developed method was successfully applied to analyze 38 batches of FSE samples supplied by three pharmaceutical factories, which showed acceptable linearity, intra-day precision (RSD < 2.76%), inter-day precision (RSD < 3.43%) and the average recovery rates in the range of (95.38 +/- 2.96)% to (101.60 +/- 3.08)%. At last, hierarchical clustering analysis and Bayes discriminant analysis statistical methods were used to classify and differentiate the 38 FSE samples to provide the basis for guiding reasonable use of FSE and controlling its quality better.