Determination of alkaloids and phenols in the chewable husk products of Areca catechu L. Using HPLC-UV and UHPLC-MS/MS

Abstract

The chewable husk products of Areca catechu L., named “Binglang” including Qingguo and Yanguo are widely used as a stimulant by people in southern China. However, no quality control analytical method has yet been developed for chewable Binglang. A high performance liquid chromatography coupled with UV detector (HPLC-UV) method for quantitative analysis of four characteristic areca alkaloids is being reported here. In addition, an ultra high-pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) method for determination of usually overlooked constituents of Binglang products, including eight phenols, and one minor alkaloid has also been developed for the first time. Moreover, fingerprint similarity evaluation, and pattern recognition including principle component analysis (PCA) and random forest (RF) were applied to analyze the obtained spectrometric data. The results firstly revealed substantial variations in the levels of areca alkaloids among Qingguo, Yanguo, raw husk, and the seed products. Two phenols, i.e. (+)-catechin and p-hydroxybenzoic acid, among the analytes were found to be considerably high in the husk products. This study presents the first important step toward providing a systematic method for comprehensive quality control of Binglang products.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Areca alkaloids
• Areca catechu L.
• binglang
• phenols
• quality control

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Hunan Academy of Chinese Medicine, Hunan Province Universities 2011 Collaborative Innovation Center of Protection and Utilization of Hu-xiang Chinese Medicine Resources, Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Diagnostics in Chinese Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine Processing Technology Heritage Base, and National Natural Science Foundation of China (81673579).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.