Use, history, and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry chemical analysis of Aconitum

Mohamed El-Shazly; Chi-Jung Tai; Tung-Ying Wu; Dezső Csupor; Judit Hohmann; Fang-Rong Chang; Yang-Chang Wu

doi:10.1016/j.jfda.2015.09.001

Use, history, and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry chemical analysis of Aconitum

J Food Drug Anal. 2016 Jan;24(1):29-45. doi: 10.1016/j.jfda.2015.09.001. Epub 2015 Oct 16.

Authors

Mohamed El-Shazly^{1

2}, Chi-Jung Tai^{1

3}, Tung-Ying Wu⁴, Dezső Csupor⁵, Judit Hohmann⁵, Fang-Rong Chang^{1

6

7

8}, Yang-Chang Wu^{1

9

4

10}

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Institute of Natural Products, Collage of Pharmacy, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
² Department of Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Ain-Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Department of Family Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁴ Chinese Medicine Research and Development Center, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Pharmacognosy, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary.
⁶ Research Center for Natural Product and New Drug Development, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁷ Cancer Center, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁸ Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁹ Center of Molecular Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan.
¹⁰ School of Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan.

Abstract

Aconitum and its products have been used in Asia for centuries to treat various ailments, including arthritis, gout, cancer, and inflammation. In general, their preparations and dispensing have been restricted to qualified folk medicine healers due to their low safety index and reported toxicity. In the past few decades, official guidelines have been introduced in Asian pharmacopeias to control Aconitum herbal products. However, these guidelines were based on primitive analytical techniques for the determination of the whole Aconitum alkaloids and were unable to distinguish between toxic and nontoxic components. Recent advances in analytical techniques, especially high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and electrophoresis coupled with highly sensitive detectors, allowed rapid and accurate determination of Aconitum secondary metabolites. Reports focusing on liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis of Aconitum and its herbal products are discussed in the current review. This review can be used by the health regulatory authorities for updating pharmacopeial guidelines of Aconitum and its herbal products.

Keywords: Aconitum; Asia; arthritis; diterpene alkaloids; liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology (NSC 103-2911-I-002-303; MOST 104-2911-I-002-302; MOST 103-2325-B-039-008; and MOST 103-2325-B-039-007-CC1) and National Health Research Institutes (NHRI-EX103-10241BI)