Cassiae semen: A review of its phytochemistry and pharmacology

Dong, Xiaoxv; Fu, Jing; Yin, Xingbin; Yang, Chunjing; Zhang, Xin; Wang, Wenping; Du, Xueying; Wang, Qingling; Ni, Jian

As a widely used traditional Chinese medicine, there are some adulterants of this plant, including the seeds of C. occidentalis (Leguminosae), C. sophera (Leguminosae) and Sesbania aculeata Pers (Papilionaceae) (22) (23) (24) . To date, a number of methods have been developed to identify and distinguish these, including experiential identification, morphological identification, ultraviolet spectrophotometry, the thin layer chromatography method, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), HPLC-coupled with time-of-flight and ion trap mass spectrometry, and SDS-PAGE (25) (26) (27) (28) . Among these methods, the HPLC method is regarded as the most popular method for evaluating the quality and authenticity of Cassiae semen. Chrysophanol and aurantio-obtusin are used as the indicator compounds to characterize the quality of this plant and the minimum contents are defined as 0.20 and 0.080%, respectively, in the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (1).