Fingerprint analysis of Zanthoxylum armatum DC. by HPLC

An effective and comprehensive high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was established for fingerprint analysis of Zanthoxylum armatum DC. for the detection of pungent compounds. The results demonstrated that the method was stable, reliable and accurate. Seven common characteristic peaks were obtained and applied to the similarity evaluation (SE), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA). The 24 batches of Z. armatum samples showed good similarities (> 0.989). The results of HCA and PCA showed that 24 batches of samples were divided into three groups. Three sanshools (hydroxy-alpha-, hydroxy-beta- and hydroxy-gamma-sanshool) and Prudomestin (3,5,7-Trihydroxy-4',8-dimethoxyflavone) were identified from seven common peaks by standards and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The relative content of the three sanshools accounted for more than 93 % of all seven of the common components. The simultaneous quantification of three pungent compounds was conducted with the 24 samples, and the results were consistent with those of SE, HCA and PCA. The HPLC fingerprint can be effectively applied as a feature distinguishing method by combining SE, HCA, PCA and quantification analysis to evaluate the quality of Z. armatum.