Chemical fingerprinting of Su-He-Xiang-Wan and attribution of major characteristic peaks for its quality control by GC-MS

A simple and facile gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) fingerprint of Su-He-Xiang-Wan (SHXW) was developed, the similarity analysis was conducted, and attribution of the major characteristic peaks was identified for SHXW quality control. GC-MS analysis was performed on a QP2010 instrument (Shimadzu, Japan) equipped with a capillary column of RTX-5MS. The column temperature was initiated at 50 °C, held for 5 min, increased at the rate of 3 °C/min to 120 °C, held for 2 min, and then increased at the rate of 4 °C/min to 220 °C, held for 10 min. Helium carrier gas was used at a constant flow rate of 1.3 mL/min. Mass conditions were ionization voltage, 70 eV; injector temperature, 250 °C; ion source temperature, 250 °C; splitting ratio, 30:1; full scan mode in the 40–500 Da mass ranges with rate of 0.2 s per scan. Attribution of the major characteristic peaks was identified for SHXW by comparing the chemical standards, references of Chinese herbal medicines and the negative controls of prescription samples (NC) of SHXW. With the help of the temperature-programmed retention indices (PTRIs) used together with mass spectra and chemical standards, 25 major characteristic peaks have been identified. Nine volatile medicinal materials were identified in the prescription of SHXW by attributing to the 27 major characteristic peaks. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is a powerful approach to quality control of complex herbal medicines.