An accurate and reliable method of high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprint combining with multi-ingredient determination was developed and validated to evaluate the influence of sulfur-fumigatedPaeoniae Radix Albaon the quality and chemical constituents of Si Wu Tang. Multivariate data analysis including hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis, which integrated with high-performance liquid chromatographic fingerprint and multi-ingredient determination, was

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... oyed to evaluate Si Wu Tang in a more objective and scientific way. Interestingly, in this paper, a total of 37 and 36 peaks were marked as common peaks in ten batches of Si Wu Tang containing sun-driedPaeoniae Radix Albaand ten batches of Si Wu Tang containing sulfur-fumigatedPaeoniae Radix Alba, respectively, which indicated the changed fingerprint profile of Si Wu Tang when containing sulfur-fumigated herb. Furthermore, the results of simultaneous determination for multiple ingredients showed that the contents of albiflorin and paeoniflorin decreased significantly (P<0.01) and the contents of gallic acid andZ-ligustilide decreased to some extent at the same time when Si Wu Tang contained sulfur-fumigatedPaeoniae Radix Alba. Therefore, sulfur-fumigation processing may have great influence on the quality of Chinese herbal prescription.