The Committee of Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy, Department of Health completed the first version of Chinese Herbal Pharmacopeia in 2004. The first version included only 200 Chinese crude drugs species. However the items included were too less comparing to the numbers of items included either in the Pharmacopeia, PRC, 2005 or Japanese Pharmacopeia, 14th Edition, 1996. More items should be included in the upcoming revised version. Then chemical specification of those new items needed to be established.
We selected 40 commonly used items which were recorded in PRC Pharmacopeia but not in Taiwanese Herbal Pharmacopeia. Twenty specimen of each 40 herbs were purchased around the island. Five tests including loss on drying, total ash, acid-insoluble ash, diluted ethanol-soluble extract, water-soluble extract of 20 samples of each herb were analyzed. Additionally, Lonicera Japonica Flos, Lonicerae Japonicae Calulis and Oroxyli Semen were selected for HPLC analysis for the contents of their marker constituents, chlorogenic acid or baicalin.
Besides referring to other related pharmacopeias, we also consulted staffs from Bureau of Food and Drug Analysis and QC staffs from major GMP Pharmaceutical factories to ensure the feasibility of the specification. The results will be provided as major references for revising the new edition of the Taiwanese Herbal Pharmacopeia.