Comparison of chemical constituents among licorice, roasted licorice, and roasted licorice with honey

Abstract

Licorice (root and rhizome of Glycyrrhiza uralensis Fisch.) is sometimes used as crude drug after processing. In this report, we prepared roasted licorice with or without honey using 3 lots of crude drug samples derived from wild G. uralensis, and analyzed the constituents in unprocessed, roasted, and honey-roasted licorice samples by high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-ion trap-time of flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-IT-TOF-MS) with principal component analysis. We found that the areas of 41 peaks were noticeably changed by processing. Among them, the areas of 12 peaks, viz. isoliquiritin, isoliquiritigenin, glucoisoliquiritin, 6″-O-acetylisoliquiritin, 6″-O-acetylisoliquiritin apioside, glycyrrhetinic acid 3-O-glucuronide, 5 kinds of sugar-derivatives and one compound whose molecular weight was 386 Da were increased by roasting in all 3 lots, and those peak areas were increased by higher heating temperatures. Among the increased peaks, 3 kinds of sugar-derivatives had larger areas, and 6″-O-acetylisoliquiritin had lower areas than those in honey-roasted licorice. Those sugar-derivatives were the only characteristics differing between honey-roasted licorice and roasted licorice. Meanwhile, the areas of 9 peaks, four of them identified as 6″-O-acetylliquiritin, 6″-O-acetylliquiritin apioside, formononetin and gancaonin L, were decreased by roasting in all 3 lots, but there were no differences between roasted licorice with or without honey. Those compounds whose amounts were changed by processing could be used as markers for the quality control of roasted and honey-roasted licorice.

Quantitative analysis and pharmacokinetic comparison of multiple bioactive components in rat plasma after oral administration of Qi‐Shen‐Ke‐Li formula and its single‐herb extracts using ultra‐high‐performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry

“…In addition, five flavonoids (liquiritigenin, isoliquiritigenin, liquiritin, isoliquiritin, and liquiritin apioside) from GGL were quantified in this study. The PK behaviors of these five compounds were similar due to the similar chemical structures (Ota et al, 2017). Compared with the GGL group, the duration in rats was prolonged, and the bioavailability was reduced after the herbal combination in QSKL.…”

Chemical profiling of Honghua Xiaoyao tablet and simultaneous determination of its quality markers by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry combined with chemometrics methods

“…The MS E /Fast DDA information in both of positive and negative ion modes have been used for structure characterization. A total of 14, including 13 pentacyclic triterpene saponins and one pentacyclic triterpenes were matched by UNIFI software [24,33–37]. Three compounds named GA (Cpd 44), GOG (Cpd 51), as well as GRA (Cpd 58), were tentatively assured by comparing their accurate parent and daughter ions of MS E /Fast DDA spectra and retention times with those of reference compounds.…”

Identification and Analysis of Compound Profiles of Sinisan Based on ‘Individual Herb, Herb-Pair, Herbal Formula’ before and after Processing Using UHPLC-Q-TOF/MS Coupled with Multiple Statistical Strategy

“…According to the previous reports [9,10,11,12], saponins, terpenoids, and flavones are the main chemical components in BR (VPBR), PRA (VPPRA), AFI, and GRM. These components easily lose a proton under mass spectrum detection, resulting in a better mass response in negative ion mode than in positive one.…”