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Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Medicinal plants in the treatment of women's disorders: analytical strategies to assure quality, safety and efficacy

Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis
Available online 28 March 2015
In Press, Accepted Manuscript — Note to users
Review

Medicinal plants in the treatment of women's disorders: analytical strategies to assure quality, safety and efficacy

doi:10.1016/j.jpba.2015.03.020
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Highlights

•
The main medicinal plants used for women's disorders have been reviewed.
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The analytical strategies to assure quality, safety and efficacy have been reported.
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Plants are classified on the basis of the chemical markers used for the quality control.

Abstract

During last decades an increasing number of herbal products specifically targeting women's disorders has appeared in the worldwide marketplace. This growth highlights the need for a critical evaluation of quality, safety and efficacy of these products.
Analytical techniques applied to the quality control of the main medicinal plants used for women health (relief of menopause and menstrual related symptoms) have been reviewed. Thanks to the innovation in analytical technology, identification and detection of secondary metabolites dramatically improved. In particular, hyphenated techniques have proved to be the most suitable for the rapid identification of compounds in plant matrix. Moreover, taking into account that differences in sample quality are not only found in the main compounds or in the chemical markers but also in the low-concentration compounds, fingerprint analysis might be a simple way for identification and quality control of herbal products containing a large number of low amounts of unknown compounds. Furthermore in several papers the information obtained from the analysis of a plant have been processed by statistical elaborations.
Medicinal plants here discussed are classified on the basis of the chemical markers used for their quality control.

Abbreviations

  • CE, Capillary Electrophoresis;
  • DAD, Diode Array Detector;
  • ELSD, Evaporative Light Scattering;
  • ESI, Electrospray Ionization;
  • FLD, Fluorescence Detector;
  • GC-MS, Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry;
  • HPLC, High Performance Liquid Chromatography;
  • HPTLC, High Performance Thin Layer Chromatography;
  • HR-MS, High Resolution Mass Spectrometry;
  • HSCC, High-Speed Countercurrent Chromatography;
  • HS-SPME, Headspace-Solid Phase Microextraction;
  • IR, Infrared Spectroscopy;
  • IT, Ion Trap;
  • LC-MS, Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry;
  • MALDI, Matrix Assisted Laser Desorbition Ionization;
  • MS, Mass Spectrometry;
  • NIR, Near-Infrared Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy;
  • PAD, Photodiode Array Detection;
  • PCA, Principal Component Analysis;
  • PLS-DA, Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis;
  • TLC, Thin Layer Chromatography;
  • ToF, Time of Flight;
  • UPLC, Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography

Keywords

  • women's disorders;
  • herbal products;
  • quality control;
  • metabolic fingerprint;
  • analytical techniques;
  • statistical analysis.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 089969763; fax: +39 089969602.
Copyright © 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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