Journal of chromatography. A
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Review
Chemical analysis and quality control of Ginkgo biloba leaves, extracts, and phytopharmaceuticals.
The chemical analysis and quality control of Ginkgo leaves, extracts, phytopharmaceuticals and some herbal supplements is comprehensively reviewed. The review is an update of a similar, earlier review in this journal [T. A. van Beek, J. ⋯ More research in this direction is clearly needed. For the analysis of Ginkgo proanthocyanidins (7%) for instance, no reliable assays are yet existing. Finally the growing literature on pharmacokinetic and fingerprinting studies of Ginkgo is briefly summarised.
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Flavonoids in plants used for the treatment of various cardiovascular, cancer diseases have been reported to possess potential protective effects against oxidative injury. Ginkgo biloba leaves, known for their antioxidant activity, were chosen for this study. In this paper, 12 flavonoids in G. biloba leaves were identified by HPLC-diode array detection (DAD)-electrospray ionization MS. ⋯ It was found that the flavonol glycosides could markedly inhibit the luminescent signal, which indicated that they are mainly responsible for the antioxidant activities of G. biloba leaves. Total antioxidant activity of these flavonoids was used to evaluate the differences of G. biloba leaves collected in 13 habitats. The combination of chemical and activity analysis can provide a valid method to quantify the bioactive components in G. biloba leaves, and this may be a more rational approach to the quality assessment of G. biloba leaves.