Improvement in botanical standardization of commercial freeze-dried herbal extracts by using the combination of antioxidant capacity and constituent marker concentrations.

Botanical extracts are standardized to > or = 1 marker compounds (MCs). This standardization provides a certain level of quality control, but not complete quality assurance. Thus, industries are looking for other satisfactory systems to improve standardization.

Metabolomic fingerprinting of plant extracts.

The standardization and quality control of plant extracts is an important topic, in particular, when such extracts are used for medicinal purposes. Consequently, the development of fast and effective analytical methods for metabolomic fingerprinting of plant extracts is of high interest. In this investigation, electrospray mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and (1)H NMR techniques were employed with further statistical analyses of the acquired data.

A rapid liquid chromatography electrospray ionization mass spectrometry(n) method for evaluation of synephrine in Citrus aurantium L. samples.

Immature bitter orange fruit and its extracts have been introduced into the market as an alternative to Ephedra in weight loss products. However, the safety of the immature bitter orange fruit and its extracts is a debated argument due to the presence of synephrine, a constituent known as a sympathomimetic agent. In this paper, we describe the development of a new, rapid, and simple liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry method devoted to the quantitative determination of synephrine in bitter orange samples, containing a high quantity of synephrine, and sweet orange samples, known to contain a low level of synephrine but at the same time being one of the main synephrine sources in a normal human diet.

The pressor hyperresponsiveness to phenylephrine unmasks sympathetic hypofunction in migraine.

The pressor responsiveness to phenylephrine, an almost pure agonist of peripheral alpha-1-adrenoceptors, was studied in 32 migraine patients in headache-free intervals. Eighteen healthy volunteers served as a control group. Fourteen patients and 14 controls also underwent the tilt test.