Recent advances in quality control of traditional Chinese medicines

Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) have been used for disease prevention and therapy in China for a long time and are becoming increasingly popular over the world. However, TCMs are complex mixtures and contain usually hundreds of chemically different constituents, which make the quality control of crude drugs and their medical preparations extremely difficult. Therefore, better analytical strategies to assure their efficacy, safety and consistency are in great demand. The present work provides an overview of the development of quality control for TCMs based on microscopic and molecular identification, quantitative and qualitative analysis, fingerprint, combination of fingerprint and multi-component quantification, as well as activity-integrated fingerprint over the last five years. The biological fingerprinting analysis of TCMs with targeting absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion by chromatographic and chemometric method are also highlighted due to its broad application in the quality control of TCMs. The comprehensive methods analyzed with modern hyphenated techniques are strongly recommended to assess the authenticity, quality consistency and stability of TCMs.