Micellar electrokinetic chromatography fingerprinting combined with chemometrics as an efficient strategy for evaluating the quality consistency and predicting the antioxidant activity of Lianqiao Baidu pills.

An approach combining micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) fingerprinting with chemometrics was developed to evaluate the quality consistency of Lianqiao Baidu pills (LQDBPs), which are a traditional Chinese patent medicine composed of nineteen herbs used mainly to treat skin ulcers, the common cold, rheumatism, herpes, and constipation. The triangle optimization method was employed to choose a satisfactory background electrolyte, with the information index, I, as an objective function for assessing the capillary electrophoresis conditions. Then, under the optimal conditions, the MEKC fingerprints of 28 batches of samples were established, and five marker compounds were quantitatively determined simultaneously. A limited-ratio quantified fingerprint method was introduced to evaluate the chromatographic fingerprints both qualitatively and quantitatively. Principle component analysis revealed that the 28 batches of samples can be clustered according to different manufacturers. Moreover, the relationship between the fingerprint and the antioxidant activity was explored by orthogonal partial least-squares regression, which provided critical medicinal efficacy information for quality control. The present study establishes a powerful and reliable method for monitoring the quality consistency of LQBDP. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved