Application of delayed luminescence method on measuring of the processing of Chinese herbal materials

BACKGROUND: Based on the principle of tradition Chinese medicine, the processing refers to various techniques that alter the overall properties of herbal materials to meet the requirements of therapeutic applications. However, the standards of quality control and scientific standard operation protocol for processing manufacturing are largely unknown and there is a huge demand for the development of scientific tools for evaluating the quality during and after the processing. The key challenge in evidence-based medicine is to characterize the processing of herbal materials from system-based perspective. METHODS: Delayed luminescence (DL) as a rapid, direct, systemic tool was used to characterize the properties of raw and processed materials of Rehmanniae radix and Ginseng radix et rhizome. Hyperbolic function was used to extract four parameters from DL curves of herbal materials. Statistical tools, including one-way analysis of variance and principal component analysis, were used to differentiate raw and processed herbal materials. RESULTS: Our results showed DL properties were able to reliably identify raw and processed materials of Rehmanniae radix and Ginseng radix et rhizoma, respectively. In addition, the results indicated that after four cycles of processing for Rehmanniae radix, there was no much significant change in DL parameters which resembles the results obtained from chemical analyses (after five cycles) using (1)HNMR and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry in previous studies. CONCLUSION: DL may serve as a fast, robust and sensitive tool for evaluating processing on herbs and may be used as part of a comprehensive platform for assessing the quality of herbal materials. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13020-018-0202-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.