Development of the fingerprints for the quality of the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and its related preparations by HPLC-DAD and LC–MSn

High-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) fingerprints were developed for identification of both lipophilic and hydrophilic components of the roots of Salvia miltiorrhiza and four related preparations. These samples were separated with an Agilent Zorbax Extend C18 reserved-phase column (5 μm, 250 mm × 4.6 mm) by linear gradient elution using water-phosphoric acid (100:0.026, v/v) and acetonitrile as mobile phase. The flow rate was 0.8 ml/min and the detector wavelength was set at 280 nm. Mean chromatograms and correlation coefficients of samples were calculated by the software “Similarity Evaluation System for Chromatographic Fingerprint of TCM”. The correlation coefficients of Danshen and Fufang Danshen tablets (FDT) samples were in the range of 0.352–0.993 and 0.768–0.987, respectively. The correlation coefficients of Compound Danshen dripping pills (CDDP), Danshen injection (DSI) and Xiangdan injection (XDI) samples were higher than 0.928, 0.850 and 0.960, respectively. It was the first time to identify 34 peaks by comparing with standard compounds and using liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MSn) technique. All results indicated that the developed fingerprint assay could be readily utilized as a quality control method for S. miltiorrhiza and its related preparations.