Characterization of commercial kava-kava herbal drug and herbal drug preparations by means of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The efficiency of one- and two-dimensional NMR experiments in characterizing the content of the constituents of both herbal drugs and herbal drug preparations is demonstrated for kava-kava. These experiments directly detect active constituents represented by kavalactones in both a finely powdered herbal drug and a commercial extract. In addition, NMR spectroscopy can detect all other compounds present in the extract. As previously evidenced, NMR experiments can represent a generally applicable technique for rapid screening and are a complement to the classical analytical techniques such as high-performance thin-layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, capillary gas chromatography, and electrophoresis. These experiments can be considered a very simple and fast analytical method to obtain a fingerprint of the herbal drugs and their preparations, and to quantify the content of the active principles of the extract.