Chemical Discrimination of Astragalus mongholicus and Astragalus membranaceus Based on Metabolomics Using UHPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS Approach

Abstract

Astragalus mongholicus (MG) and Astragalus membranaceus (MJ), both generally known as Huangqi in China, are two perennial herbals widely used in variety diseases. However, there were still some differences in the chemical ingredients between MG and MJ. In this paper, metabolomics combined with the ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization/quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-Q-TOF-MS/MS) was employed to contrastively analyze the chemical constituents between MG and MJ. As a result, principal component analysis showed that MG and MJ were separated clearly. A total of 53 chemical markers were successfully identified for the discrimination of MG and MJ. Of them, the contents of 36 components including Astragaloside I~III, Astragaloside IV, Agroastragaloside I, etc. in MJ were significantly higher than those in MG. On the contrary, the contents of 17 other components including coumaric acid, formononetin, sophoricoside, etc. in MG were obviously higher than those in MJ. The results showed that the distinctive constituents in MG and MJ were remarkable, and MJ may own stronger pharmacological activities than MG. In a word, MG and MJ may be treated as two different herbs. This paper demonstrated that metabolomics was a vitally credible technology to rapidly screen the characteristic chemical composition of traditional Chinese medicine.

Ononin induces cell apoptosis and reduces inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis fibroblast-like synoviocytes by alleviating MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways

“…Ononin has multiple physiological functions, such as antioxidant, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory activities (Yu et al, 2016). Additionally, people also found Ononin could promote skin growth, scaveng oxygen free radicals, inhibit lipid peroxidation, maintain the concentration of nitric oxide in blood, protect ischemia-reperfusion injury and enhance immunity (Wang et al, 2019). In view of its so many important physiological functions, we speculated that it had a special effect in fighting against RA.…”

Immunomodulatory Effect of a New Ingredients Group Extracted from Astragalus Through Membrane Separation Technique

“…It was discovered that CTX and HC mainly affected amino acid metabolism and energy metabolism, which is consistent with previous reports. 15 , 24 , 25 Besides, the enrichment analysis revealed that A4 was more inclined to regulate body’s amino acid metabolism in CTX-rats and energy metabolism in HC-rats.

Figure 10 A schematic diagram showing amino acids metabolism and energy metabolism interacting with each other during A4 treatment.

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Phytochemistry and cardiovascular protective effects of Huang‐Qi (Astragali Radix)

“…It is generally recognized that AMM is a varied species of AM 83–85 . Recent LC‐MS analysis indicated that the two herbs had significant differences in the contents of some chemical markers 77,86 . Here, we further discuss their structural differences by comparing the 189 compounds that have been isolated from AM and AMM.…”

“…Cycloartane‐type triterpenoids are rare in nature. They have only been reported from a few plants, such as those from Astragalus, Cimicifuga , and Schisandra species 78–90 . Thus far, a total of 51 cycloartane‐type triterpenoids and saponins ( 1 – 51 ) have been isolated and identified from AM and AMM; and these two species share 12 common compounds ( 1, 5 – 11, 13, 21 – 22, 31 ).…”