Research progress of polysaccharide detection methods in traditional Chinese medicine

In recent years, with the advancement of analytical technology and the development of molecular biology, the research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) polysaccharides is becoming a new frontier and hot spot in life science research due to their effectiveness and non-toxicity. The quantitative determination of polysaccharides plays an extremely important role in the quality control of polysaccharide drugs. However, the structural complexities of natural polysaccharides present a major obstacle to their accurate quantification. The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive guide for the accurate quantification of polysaccharides in TCM. In this paper, the quantitative methods of polysaccharides are divided into traditional quantitative methods and new methods, and summarized from the medicinal materials included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2025 edition) and the relevant literature in the past ten years. The traditional methods for polysaccharide quantification include titration, colorimetry, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and resonance light scattering (RLS). With the technological progress, new nondestructive testing methods such as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) have gradually emerged. In addition, glycospectrometry, as another new method, can accurately quantify the structural characteristics and content of polysaccharides by combining positional enzyme digestion technology and HPLC. Moreover, this review elaborates on the principles and discusses the advantages and limitations of each method mentioned. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive reference for the accurate determination of polysaccharide content in TCM, enhance its practicability and precision, and promote its wider application in the quality control of TCM and Chinese patent medicine preparations.