Quality Control and Discrimination of Andrographis paniculata (Burm. f.) Nees based on High Performance Liquid Chromatography Fingerprinting Combined with Chemometric Approaches

Andrographis paniculata (Burm. f.) Nees is a potential medicinal herb used to treat a wide range of diseases. Various geographical origins of this herb might lead to the diversity of the herbal quality. The research aims to establish the chemical fingerprint for quality control of Andrographis paniculata and to find out the chemical markers for discrimination from different origin through the chemometrics approach. A high performance liquid chromatography photo diode array method was developed for simultaneous quantification of five marker compounds and for establishing the chemical fingerprint of Andrographis paniculata from 28 different locations of Eastern India. Chemometrics techniques including hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis were used. The similarities between each fingerprint of the sample and the simulative mean chromatogram were greater than 0.90. The relative standard deviation of relative retention time and relative peak area of precision, stability and repeatability of 12 characteristic peaks in these samples were less than 1 % and 3 %, respectively. The andrographolide content in the Odisha region varied in the range of 2.68-5.47 %. The results of hierarchical cluster analysis, principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis showed that Andrographis paniculata could be successfully grouped into two groups in accordance with the origin. Andrographolide (visual infusion phlebitis score >1.5) was the key discriminatory marker for discriminating the samples. The high performance liquid chromatography fingerprint combined with chemometric approaches could be used as an effective tool for discriminating the herb from different origins and quality control of Andrographis paniculata.