Abstract: A gas chromatographic fingerprint combined with chemical pattern recognition was successfully developed and applied to assess the quality consistency of 20 Chenxianghuaqi tablets. Volatile components from the 20 Chenxianghuaqi tablets were extracted with ethanol under ultrasonic conditions. n-Octadecane was used as the internal standard to calculate the amounts of the three main components and to confirm the relative peak areas of the other components. Gas chromatographic fingerprints of the 20 Chenxianghuaqi tablets were established. There were 11 common peaks in the fingerprints, and the similarity of each batch of samples was obtained. Ten common peaks were identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, with reference comparison. The obtained fingerprints were used for the chemical pattern recognition, including hierarchical cluster analysis and the principal component analysis. Different batches of Chenxianghuaqi tablets could be differentiated effectively, and major markers that led to differences among the sample batches were identified. The method proposed in this study is comprehensive and reliable, and it can be used as a valuable reference to evaluate and control the quality of Chenxianghuaqi tablets.

Key words: gas chromatographic (GC), mass spectrometry (MS), fingerprint, chemical pattern recognition, Chenxianghuaqi tablet