KUO-CHING WEN*

Division of Drug Chemistry, National Laboratories of Foods and Drugs, Department of Health, Executive Yuan, 161-2, Kuen-Yang Street, Nangkang 115, Taipei, R.O.C.

(Received: September 14, 2000; Accepted: November 23, 2000)

ABSTRACT

   In this review, difficulties for the quality control of traditional Chinese medicine are described briefly in the introduction section. The decoction method, the necessity of setting standard decoction and the definition of standard decoction are presented in the second section. The distributions and variations of extract yields of 99 unified traditional Chinese medicine formulas are discussed in the third section. Finally, the variations in turnover rates of some marker constituents in different formulas and their influencing factors are also discussed.

Key words: traditional Chinese medicine, standard decoction, extract, marker constituent, turnover rate