Monographs for quality evaluation of Chinese crude drugs

Abstract

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used for medication in China over thousands of years, and now become more and more accepted as a source of alternative and complementary medicine in western country.Today the chemical analysis is the dominant direction of the quality control system of TCM and natural medicines. But it is difficult to measure the quality for TCM herbs by detecting solely the presence / absence of a single or small number of marker components at very low concentration, especially for the herbs derived from mutliorigins and produced from wide localities, as well as those with unknown principle bioactive components.From this standpoint, it is necessary to use multidisciplinary technologies, integrating the morphological authentication and chemical analysis, qualitative detection and quantitative determination, and physic-chemical analysis and bioassay, in order to distinguish the authentic herb from the adulterant, the superior from the inferior, and to improve the standards of TCM herbs.This book includes 60 commonly used TCM herbs, each involving the following items: definition, location, action and indication, description, microscopic identification, TLC identification, HPLC/GC fingerprint identification (optional), assay, discussion and references.It is a valuable reference of quality evaluation for TCM herbs.