Assessment of phytotoxic effects, uptake and translocation of diclofenac in chicory (Cichorium intybus).

Pharmaceuticals in the environment have been an increasing research topic over the past decade, since they can be found in both natural and drinking water, including irrigation of crops and edible plants with contaminated water. Our main goal was to evaluate the phytotoxic effect of diclofenac (DCF), a widely used pharmaceutical, on chicory (Cichorium intybus) seedlings. Additionally, we verified the uptake, bioconcentration and translocation of DCF from soil to chicory tissues. Results show that DCF induces different physiological changes in chicory seedlings. On the other hand, the soil-chicory experiment showed the activation of the detoxification system in plants treated with DCF (1 mg L-1). Finally, we found the migration of DCF from the irrigation water to the soil, followed by its uptake through the root, and its translocation to the aerial part of the chicory. However, DCF does not bioaccumulate in chicory leaves, being scarcely translocated from roots to aerial parts. This last result, along with the estimation of a daily intake of chicory, show that irrigation with water containing DCF (≤1 mg L-1) does not represent a threat to human health. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the effect of DCF on chicory seedlings, including the evaluation of its uptake and translocation.

Integrating chemical similarity and bioequivalence: A pilot study on quality consistency evaluation of dispensing granule and traditional decoction of Scutellariae Radix by a totality-of-the-evidence approach.

There is an increasing focus on the quality consistency evaluation of dispensing granule in traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs). According to the guideline from Chinese Pharmacopoeia Commission, the substantial equivalence of dispensing granule and traditional decoction should be determined, and the chromatographic fingerprint has been recommended as a comprehensive qualitative approach to assess the quality consistency between dispensing granule and traditional decoction. However, a high-degree chemical similarity does not equal a bioequivalence. Attempting to realize the quality evaluation by integrating chemical consistency and bioequivalence, we herein proposed a totality-of-the-evidence approach based on clustering analysis and equivalence evaluation taking the dispensing granule and traditional decoction of Scutellariae Radix (SR) as a typical case. Chemical fingerprints were developed by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with photodiode array detector and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (HPLC-PDA/QTOF-MS). Subsequently, a feature selection strategy, integrated linear and nonlinear correlation analysis, was carried out to assess the correlation between chemical profiles and biological activities. Finally, quality consistency between the dispensing granule and the traditional decoction was determined by bioactive marker-guided hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), k-means clustering method and bioequivalence evaluation. The available evidence suggested that not all the dispensing granule of SR were sufficiently similar to the traditional decoction. This study provides an applicable methodology for quality consistency evaluation of dispensing granule and traditional decoction in TCMs.