Pyrrolizidine alkaloids(PAs) are a group of naturally occurring alkaloids with a pyrrolizidine skeleton which can be found in about 3% of the world's flowering plants. It is notorious that PAs are cause the hepatoxic and genotoxic-carcinogenic effects by taking PA-containing herbs, food and dietary supplements. In order to control the poisoning caused by PAs, European Medicines Agency has set a limit of intake of PAs from herbal medicinal products at 0.007 μg of 1,2-unsaturated PAs/kg body weight. Nonetheless, a systematic overview of the amount of PAs in the herb has not been provided. Therefore, this paper is to systematically review the current status of PAs content analysis of herbal medicines and foods reported in the literature, and to provide theoretical and experimental support for the safety risk assessment and control of PAs in Chinese herbal medicines.
Keywords: content analysis; food; herbal medicine; pyrrolizidine alkaloids.