Significant differences in alkaloid content of Coptis chinensis (Huanglian), from its related American species 英文参考文献.docVIP

Chinese Medicine BioMedCentral Research Open Access Significant differences in alkaloid content of Coptis chinensis (Huanglian), from its related American species Shreya Kamath1, Matthew Skeels1 and Aswini Pai*2 Address: 1Department of Chemistry, St Lawrence University, Canton, New York 13617, USA and 2Department of Biology, St Lawrence University, Canton, New York 13617, USA Email: Shreya Kamath - sakama04@; Matthew Skeels - mskeels@; Aswini Pai* - apai@ * Corresponding author Published: 24 August 2009 Received: 13 January 2009 Accepted: 24 August 2009 Chinese Medicine 2009, 4:17 doi:10.1186/1749-8546-4-17 This article is available from: /content/4/1/17 ? 2009 Kamath et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: The growing popularity of Chinese herbal medicine in the United States has prompted large-scale import of raw herbs from Asia. Many of the Asian herbs have phylogenetically related North American species. We compared three phylogenetically related species, namely Coptis chinensis (Huanglian), Hydrastis canadensis and Coptis trifolia to show whether they can be substituted by one another in terms of alkaloid content. Methods: We used microwave assisted extraction to obtain alkaloids berberine, coptisine, palmatine and hydrastine. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to quantify each alkaloid. Results: Hydrastis canadensis has the most berberine, whereas Coptis trifolia has the most coptisine. Hydrastine and palmatine were unique to Hydrastis canadensis and Coptis chinensis respectively. Conclusion: Neither Hydrastis canadensis nor Coptis trifolia contains all the alkaloids found in Coptis chinensis used in Chinese medicine