[Study on the "signal" constituents for the evaluation of animal crude drugs. V. The "signal" constituents for the identification of Lumbricus in cold medicines].
Lumbricus has been widely used as an antifebrile agent in cold medicines. The identification of each agent, especially crude drugs in formulations, is very important from the viewpoint of quality control. In this paper, the contents of amino acids, organic acids, nucleic acid components and cholesterol were investigated to evaluate the "signal" constituents of Lumbricus and Lumbricus extracts in the medicines. It was found that the content pattern of these components of Lumbricus extracts was almost the same as those in Lumbricus itself. However, most of other crude drugs used in cold medicines, also contain some of these components. It was difficult to identify Lumbricus through the difference in the content pattern of these components. Therefore, we focused on such five constituents as cholesterol, lombricine, lactic acid, inosine and hypoxanthine, because lombricine is a characteristic amino acid of Lumbricus and the contents of other four components in Lumbricus are relatively high compared with those of other crude drugs. Lombricine and inosine were detected clearly in all seven commercial formulations investigated, and cholesterol and hypoxanthine were also detected except two commercial formulations. However, the detection of lactic acid was not successful in all formulations, because of the presence of interfering components. In the seven commercial cold medicines, lombricine and inosine were found to be useful as "signal" constituents for the identification of Lumbricus in cold medicines.
Hashimoto
A
A
Analytical Research Laboratory, Tanabe Seiyaku Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan.
Nishi
H
H
Kokusenya
Y
Y
Sato
T
T
D018712:Analgesics, Non-Narcotic / Q000737:chemistry*; D000818:Animals; D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D007288:Inosine / Q000032:analysis*; D009835:Oligochaeta / Q000737:chemistry*; D011786:Quality Control; D012694:Serine / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000032:analysis; D014020:Tissue Extracts / Q000737:chemistry*
D018712:Analgesics, Non-Narcotic; D014020:Tissue Extracts; D012694:Serine; D007288:Inosine; C008295:lombricine