Equality Evaluation on a Multi-Sources Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ephedra sinica and Tinglizi

The study is aimed at investigating that species and origin or batches play a significant role in the quality of herbal medicine. We chose the traditional Chinese medicines for relieving the exterior syndromes, cough, and asthma, and Ephedra sinica and Tinglizi were as representative herbals. The results of morphological identification, composition qualitative analysis, and main component quantitative analysis, showed the key quantitative components of herbal Ephedra slices were statistically significant between variety and batch. These results demonstrated that varieties and origin are the key factors affecting the quality of the decoction pieces. The standardization ratio is an indispensable measure for guaranteeing stable medicine-source quality and consistent main component contents.