Tapia Syndrome and Severe Pain Induced by Occipital Bone Metastasis of Prostate Cancer.

Tapia syndrome is characterized by unilateral tongue paralysis, hoarseness, and dysphagia. It is often associated with issues in the lower cranial nerves and is rarely caused by malignant tumors. A 71-year-old Japanese male with prostate cancer and bone metastases experienced severe headaches, oral discomfort, dysphagia, and hoarseness for a month. Neurological examination revealed left-sided tongue atrophy and left vocal cord paralysis, suggesting problems with cranial nerves IX and XII. CT scans showed bone metastasis in the left occipital bone. Brain MRI showed no brain or meningeal metastasis, but neck MRI revealed a mass near the left hypoglossal canal. His prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level was 53.2 ng/mL. Based on these findings, we diagnosed him with occipital bone metastasis of prostate cancer with Tapia syndrome. We treated him with palliative radiation therapy (RT), delivering 30 Gy in 10 fractions over two weeks. We did not use drug treatment or chemotherapy due to side effects and the patient's preferences. After just one day of RT, his severe headache and oral discomfort significantly improved. By the end of the two-week treatment, his hoarseness had also improved, and he was able to eat. However, tongue atrophy had not improved three months after RT. We presented a unique case of palliative RT for occipital bone metastasis of prostate cancer with Tapia syndrome. Within two weeks, the patient's headache and dysphagia had greatly improved, although tongue atrophy remained partially unresolved after palliative RT.

Progress and prediction of multicomponent quantification in complex systems with practical LC-UV methods.

Complex systems exist widely, including medicines from natural products, functional foods, and biological samples. The biological activity of complex systems is often the result of the synergistic effect of multiple components. In the quality evaluation of complex samples, multicomponent quantitative analysis (MCQA) is usually needed. To overcome the difficulty in obtaining standard products, scholars have proposed achieving MCQA through the "single standard to determine multiple components (SSDMC)" approach. This method has been used in the determination of multicomponent content in natural source drugs and the analysis of impurities in chemical drugs and has been included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Depending on a convenient (ultra) high-performance liquid chromatography method, how can the repeatability and robustness of the MCQA method be improved? How can the chromatography conditions be optimized to improve the number of quantitative components? How can computer software technology be introduced to improve the efficiency of multicomponent analysis (MCA)? These are the key problems that remain to be solved in practical MCQA. First, this review article summarizes the calculation methods of relative correction factors in the SSDMC approach in the past five years, as well as the method robustness and accuracy evaluation. Second, it also summarizes methods to improve peak capacity and quantitative accuracy in MCA, including column selection and two-dimensional chromatographic analysis technology. Finally, computer software technologies for predicting chromatographic conditions and analytical parameters are introduced, which provides an idea for intelligent method development in MCA. This paper aims to provide methodological ideas for the improvement of complex system analysis, especially MCQA.

Safety of hydrogel spacers for rectal wall protection in patients with prostate cancer: A retrospective analysis of 200 consecutive cases.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the safety and complications of hydrogel spacer implantation. METHODS: This single-center historical cohort study retrospectively analyzed cases of hydrogel spacer implantation between October 2018 and March 2022. The survey items were the rates of possible hydrogel injection implementation, the success rate of hydrogel implantation including asymmetry, higher position, rectal wall infiltration, subcapsular injection, and other adverse events, and width created by the spacer. To investigate the learning curve, 1, 2, and 3 points were assigned to adverse event grades G1, G2, and G3, respectively. Spacer effectiveness obstruction, such as asymmetry was assigned 3 points. A Mann-Whitney U test was performed to assess statistically significant differences. RESULTS: The study included a total of 200 patients with a median (range) age of 70 (44-85) years. In 10 (5%) patients, hydrogel injection implementation was not possible. Of 190 patients who underwent hydrogel spacer placement, 168 (88%) received a satisfactory placement. The median (range) width of hydrogel spacers was 13.1 (4.4-18.7) mm. Spacer asymmetry, higher position, rectal wall infiltration, and prostate subcapsular infiltration occurred in 7 (3.7%), 5 (2.6%), 12 (6.3%), and 1 (0.5%) patients, respectively. G1 and G3 adverse events occurred in 13 (7%) and 4 (2%) patients, respectively. Practitioner #1 who performed the highest number of procedures had significantly (p = 0.04) lower total scores in group B. CONCLUSION: Spacer implantation yielded favorable outcomes with a high percentage of appropriate spacer implantation, and few major complications.

Chemical and pharmacological difference between honey-fried licorice and fried licorice.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: According to textual research of books from ancient times till now, there are three main preparation methods of "fried licorice", including frying licorice without excipients (F), frying licorice after dipping with water (W), and frying licorice with honey (H). However, with the development over many successive generations, honey frying has gradually become the main processing form of licorice, whereas the fried licorice is nowadays rarely used. AIM OF THE STUDY: The objectives of this study were to clarify the differences of the three forms of "fried licorice" in chemical composition and pharmacological activities, and to screen quality markers for differently processed licorice. It is expected to provide a scientific basis for the rational choice of "fried licorice" as medicine. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Non-target metabolomic analysis based on UHPLC-QE-Orbitrap-MS was conducted to compare the chemical differences between the differently processed licorice material. Pharmacodynamically, the differences in immunomodulatory activity (including intestinal flora experiment), anti-inflammatory activity, and hepatoprotective activity of the differently processed licorice were evaluated. Furthermore, multivariate statistical analysis was performed to screen potential quality markers of honey-fried licorice. The serum concentration of selected markers was determined by UHPLC-QqQ-MS. RESULTS: Metabolomic analysis showed no difference in the chemical composition of F and W, whereas the chemical composition of H was significantly different from that of F and R. The immunomodulatory activity, anti-acute inflammatory effect, and hepatoprotective effect of licorice were significantly improved after frying with honey; No significant differences were observed between F and H in term of immunomodulatory activity and anti-acute inflammatory effect, whereas, H is better than F in terms of liver-protective activity. The intestinal flora experiment confirmed that H does have immunomodulatory activity, while F may induce an increased abundance of certain pathogenic bacteria in the intestine. Multivariate statistical analysis suggests that the content of liquiritin (2), liquiritigenin (3), isoliquiritin (5), isoliquiritigenin (6) and glycyrrhizic acid (7) plusing glycyrrhetinic acid (8) in H group is closely correlated with its improved effects. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a scientific rational for the selection of "fried licorice" processing methods. In addition, it provides a scientific basis for the selection of quality markers of differently processed licorice.

Emerging biotechnology applications in natural product and synthetic pharmaceutical analyses.

Pharmaceutical analysis is a discipline based on chemical, physical, biological, and information technologies. At present, biotechnological analysis is a short branch in pharmaceutical analysis; however, bioanalysis is the basis and an important part of medicine. Biotechnological approaches can provide information on biological activity and even clinical efficacy and safety, which are important characteristics of drug quality. Because of their advantages in reflecting the overall biological effects or functions of drugs and providing visual and intuitive results, some biotechnological analysis methods have been gradually applied to pharmaceutical analysis from raw material to manufacturing and final product analysis, including DNA super-barcoding, DNA-based rapid detection, multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification, hyperspectral imaging combined with artificial intelligence, 3D biologically printed organoids, omics-based artificial intelligence, microfluidic chips, organ-on-a-chip, signal transduction pathway-related reporter gene assays, and the zebrafish thrombosis model. The applications of these emerging biotechniques in pharmaceutical analysis have been discussed in this review.

The TIGD5 gene located in 8q24 and frequently amplified in ovarian cancers is a tumor suppressor.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the fifth most common cancer of female cancer death and leading cause of lethal gynecological cancers. High-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSOC) is an aggressive malignancy that is rapidly fatal. Many cases of OC show amplification of the 8q24 chromosomal region, which contains the well-known oncogene MYC. Although MYC amplification is more frequently observed in OCs than in other tumor types, due to the large size of the 8q24 amplicon, the functions of the vast majority of the genes it contains are still unknown. The TIGD5 gene is located at 8q24.3 and encodes a nuclear protein with a DNA-binding motif, but its precise role is obscure. We show here that TIGD5 often co-amplifies with MYC in OCs, and that OC patients with high TIGD5 mRNA expression have a poor prognosis. However, we also found that TIGD5 overexpression in ovarian cancer cell lines unexpectedly suppressed their growth, adhesion, and invasion in vitro, and also reduced tumor growth in xenografted nude mice in vivo. Thus, our work suggests that TIGD5 may in fact operate as a tumor suppressor in OCs rather than as an oncogene.

Differentiation of three Asparagus species by UHPLC-MS/MS based molecular networking identification and chemical profile analysis.

Asparagi Radix (AR), a traditional Chinese medicine, is the dried roots of Asparagus cochinchinensis (Lour.) Merr. Modern pharmacological studies have shown that AR has various excellent bioactivities, such as antioxidative, antitumor, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and hypoglycemic effects. However, the quality control method of AR is incomplete and there are various AR adulterants in markets due to their similar morphological characters. Here, holistic and practical quality evaluation methods were developed to chemically distinguish three common Asparagus species in markets, including Asparagus cochinchinensis (Lour.) Merr., Asparagus officinalis L., and Asparagus lycopodineus (Baker) F.T.Wang & Tang. The chemical constituents of three species were rapidly tentatively annotated using a combination of ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography-linear ion trap-orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap-MS) and molecular networking (MN). Fifty-six steroidal saponins were annotated, including common and characteristic chemical constituents of the three Asparagus species. Besides, to establish holistic and practical methods to differentiate three Asparagus species, an HPLC-ELSD (evaporative light scattering detector) was applied for fingerprint analysis and content determination of the sum of protoneodioscin and protodioscin of twenty samples. Each Asparagus species showed characteristic chemical profile and AR showed much higher level of the sum of protoneodioscin and protodioscin than that in the others. The above analyses showed that the three Asparagus species mainly contain steroidal saponins and the developed HPLC-ELSD profile of saponin can be used to differentiate them. In conclusion, this study reveals the different chemical constituents of three Asparagus species and provides relatively feasible quality evaluation methods for them which are essential for the rational utilization of these Asparagus species.

[Quality evaluation methods and quality transfer law of Mori Cortex, fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction].

This study aims to establish a method for the component content determination and fingerprint evaluation of Mori Cortex, fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction, and to reveal the quality transfer law among the three based on transfer rate, extraction rate, and fingerprint similarity.Fifteen representative batches of Mori Cortex decoction pieces were collected to prepare fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction.UPLC-PDA was employed to establish the content determination method and fingerprint.The established UPLC method and fingerprint could be applied to the detection of Mori Cortex, fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction.The UPLC fingerprints of the 15 batches of Mori Cortex and fried Mori Cortex had good similarity(>0.9) and the same common peaks.However, only one characteristic peak(mulberroside A) could be observed in the fingerprint of fried Mori Cortex standard decoction, which indicated that the corresponding components of other common peaks in the fingerprint of Mori Cortex had low content in the water extract.The extraction rates of mulberroside A from Mori Cortex, fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction were 1.49%-2.00%, 1.62%-2.27% and 0.75%-1.29%, respectively.Mulberroside A showed the transfer rate of 103.7%-116.3% from Mori Cortex to fried Mori Cortex and 45.7%-56.9% from fried Mori Cortex to its standard decoction.The extraction rates of the 15 batches of fried Mori Cortex standard decoctions were 14.7%-19.5%.All the above indicators were within±30% of the mean value.This study established a method for the determination of mulberroside A content and fingerprint of Mori Cortex, fried Mori Cortex and its standard decoction, and clarified the quality transfer law among the three.It established the method for quality evaluation of Mori Cortex and fried Mori Cortex and can provide reference for the whole-process quality control in the preparation of the agents containing fried Mori Cortex.

Synergistic mechanism for the bioactivity fortification of licorice by honey.

ETHNOPHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: Honey-processed licorice has been used since ancient times. It was recorded that honey-processing has the effect of improving the immunomodulatory efficacy of licorice, which has been confirmed by modern pharmacological studies. However, it is still unknown why honey-processing can enhance the immunomodulatory activity of licorice. Our previous research demonstrated that honey has natural deep eutectic solvent (NADES) characteristics. In this study, we investigated the synergistic effect of honey on licorice to elucidate the possible potentiation of honey-frying on licorice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Immunological experiments were conducted to investigate whether the honey-processing could enhance the immunomodulatory efficacy of licorice in vivo. Then, the synergistic mechanism of honey and licorice was explored based on cell bioactivity tests, metabolomics analysis, bioavailability test, and Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectra. RESULTS: Pharmacological experiment verified that honey-processing enhanced the immunomodulatory efficacy of licorice. Moreover, honey increased the total flavonoid and polysaccharide contents in licorice decoction, improved the thermal stability and oral bioavailability of certain pharmacologically active constituents, and augmented their overall immunostimulatory functions. Similar effects of honey were also observed with a honey analogue GFSH, a NADES made of glucose, fructose, and sucrose with certain amount of water. The above effects might be due to multiple molecular interactions between active compounds and sugar molecules of honey. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that the biological activities of medicinal plants might be fortified by honey due to the synergism between licorice and honey. At the meantime, these findings provide theoretical and empirical basis for potential novel applications of honey or other NADESs at augmenting the health-promoting effects of medicinal plants.

Establishment of Holistic Quality Control Methods for Nelumbinis Folium Containing Alkaloids and Flavonoids with Simple HPLC Conditions.

In this study, a positive charged C18 column was used to explore its performance in analysis of herbal medicines containing alkaloids and flavonoids with Nelumbinis Folium (NF) as an example. A chromatographic fingerprint analysis method was established by high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector with commonly used 0.1% formic acid as mobile phase additive and this method could simultaneously detect both alkaloids and flavonoids with good peak shape. It is noted that the HPLC conditions were directly applied in the HPLC-ESI-Orbitrap-MS/MS analysis, and 12 common peaks were identified. In the quantification method of nuciferine, compared with common C18 column, good performance was observed, including sharp and symmetric peak shape of nuciferine, and no obvious retention time shift in chromatogram. The fingerprint method and quantification method of nuciferine and quercetin-3-O-glucuronic acid could be readily utilized as quality control methods for NF and its related preparations.

Research on expansion and classification of imbalanced data based on SMOTE algorithm.

With the development of artificial intelligence, big data classification technology provides the advantageous help for the medicine auxiliary diagnosis research. While due to the different conditions in the different sample collection, the medical big data is often imbalanced. The class-imbalance problem has been reported as a serious obstacle to the classification performance of many standard learning algorithms. SMOTE algorithm could be used to generate sample points randomly to improve imbalance rate, but its application is affected by the marginalization generation and blindness of parameter selection. Focusing on this problem, an improved SMOTE algorithm based on Normal distribution is proposed in this paper, so that the new sample points are distributed closer to the center of the minority sample with a higher probability to avoid the marginalization of the expanded data. Experiments show that the classification effect is better when use proposed algorithm to expand the imbalanced dataset of Pima, WDBC, WPBC, Ionosphere and Breast-cancer-wisconsin than the original SMOTE algorithm. In addition, the parameter selection of the proposed algorithm is analyzed and it is found that the classification effect is the best when the distribution characteristics of the original data was maintained best by selecting appropriate parameters in our designed experiments.

A Theme Issue to Celebrate Professor Robert Verpoorte's 75th Birthday: "The Past, Current, and Future of Natural Products".

Dear Colleagues, [...].

The key issues and development strategy of Chinese Classical Formulas pharmaceutical preparations.

It is well-known that Prof. Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 due to the research on artemisinin treating malaria, and this can be regarded as the milestone of modernization of Traditional medicine. This first Nobel Prize in Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has aroused profound impetus in the investigation of TCM and attracted global attention to the ancient books of TCM. Three new medicines for the treatment of COVID-19 derived from Chinese Classical Formula (, CCF) have been approved in 2021 due to their effectiveness for the treatment of COVID-19. This article introduced the research background of CCF pharmaceutical preparation (CCFPP), explained the ideas for the modernization of CCF and analyzed related issues involved in the development process of CCFPP, including the origin of medicinal materials, processing methods, dosages and the preparation process of CCF Material Reference. The strategy for industrialization was proposed in terms of the evaluation of the pharmaceutical properties, industrialization considerations, and clinical positioning of CCFPP. The key contents and requirements for the development CCFPP were also summarized according to the recently published registration guidance by the Center for Drug Evaluation in China. In addition, the safety issues of CCFPP were described, including the discussion on the non-clinical safety evaluation and analyzation on the international registration of Traditional herbal medicines. This article is aimed to provide references for enterprises, researchers, and relevant personnel of government departments that are engaged in the development of CCF to speed up the developing process of CCFPP.

The combination of UHPLC-HRMS and molecular networking improving discovery efficiency of chemical components in Chinese Classical Formula.

BACKGROUND: It is essential to identify the chemical components for the quality control methods establishment of Chinese Classical Formula (CCF). However, CCF are complex mixture of several herbal medicines with huge number of different compounds and they are not equal to the combination of chemical components from each herb due to particular formula ratio and preparation techniques. Therefore, it is time-consuming to identify compounds in a CCF by analyzing the LC-MS/MS data one by one, especially for unknown components. METHODS: An ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography-linear ion trap-orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-LTQ-Orbitrap-MS/MS) approach was developed to comprehensively profile and characterize multi-components in CCF with Erdong decoction composed of eight herbal medicines as an example. Then the MS data of Erdong decoction was analyzed by MS/MS-based molecular networking and these compounds with similar structures were connected to each other into a cluster in the network map. Then the unknown compounds connected to known compounds in a cluster of the network map were identified due to their similar structures. RESULTS: Based on the clusters of the molecular networking, 113 compounds were rapidly tentative identification from Erdong decoction for the first time in the negative mode, which including steroidal saponins, triterpenoid saponins, flavonoid O-glycosides and flavonoid C-glycosides. In addition, 10 alkaloids were tentatively identified in the positive mode from Nelumbinis folium by comparison with literatures. CONCLUSION: MS/MS-based molecular networking technique is very useful for the rapid identification of components in CCF. In Erdong decoction, this method was very suitable for the identification of major steroidal saponins, triterpenoid saponins, and flavonoid C-glycosides.

Differential Metabolomics and Network Pharmacology Analysis of Silkworm Biotransformation between Mulberry Leaves and Silkworm Droppings.

Silkworm droppings are the product of mulberry leaves digested by silkworm intestines, which are an important medicinal resource in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The contents of total fat, fat acids, crude protein, amino acids, and secondary metabolites of obtained mulberry leaves and silkworm droppings were analyzed by HPLC, GC-MS, and UHPLC-Q-TOF MS. The target genes and enriched pathways related to significantly changed compositions between mulberry leaves and silkworm droppings were analyzed by network pharmacology. High unsaturated C18 : 3 fatty acids were transformed to low unsaturated C18 : 1 from mulberry leaves to silkworm droppings. Only lysine and 17 mini-peptides had significantly higher content in silkworm droppings than in mulberry leaves. There were 36 common target genes or the different compounds between mulberry leaves and silkworm droppings. The main pathways of mulberry leaf were enriched in antivirus and anticancer properties, while the pathways of silkworm droppings were enriched in hormone regulation and signal transduction.

Research on Characteristic of Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria Based on Multiscale Entropy.

Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) is a common skin disease which symptom is local pruritus and pain. In medicine, researchers take a certain point that the brain is the control center of CSU, but in previous experiments, the researchers found that cerebellum also had a certain effect on CSU. In order to find out the influence of CSU in the brain and cerebellum, we collected the brain resting-state fMRI data from 40 healthy controls and 32 CSU patients and used DPABI to preprocess. We calculated the entropy values of five scales by using multiscale entropy (MSE) and the average entropy values of two groups' BOLD signals; 15 regions with significant differences were found which not only had a more detailed impact in the brain but also had an impact in the cerebellum, such as precentral gyrus, lenticular putamen, and vermis of cerebellum. In addition, we found that compared with the healthy controls, the entropy values of CSU patients showed two trends which need further study. The advantage of our experiment is that the multiscale entropy value is used to get more influence regions of CSU in the brain and cerebellum. The results of this paper may provide some help for the pathological study of CSU.

Detection and risk assessments of multi-pesticides in 1771 cultivated herbal medicines by LC/MS-MS and GC/MS-MS.

Focus on the safety of herbal medicines has mainly been directed towards the presence of intrinsic toxicity, as found in the cases of renal and hepatic dysfunction caused by aristolochic acids. However, contamination from extrinsic hazards may impart an even greater reduction in their safety and efficacy. This study reveals that pesticides were present in the majority (88%) of a comprehensive cross-section (n = 1771) of herbal medicine samples. Alarmingly, more than half (59%) contained pesticides over the European Pharmacopoeia (EP) limit, and 43% of them contained 35 varieties of banned, extremely toxic pesticides, eight of which were detected at levels over 500 times higher than the default Maximum Residue Limit (MRL). DDTs, carbofuran, and mevinphos were confirmed as being among the most risk-inducing pesticides by three different risk assessment methods, reported to produce carcinogenic, genotoxic, reproductive, and developmental effects, in addition to carrying nephrotoxicity and hepatotoxicity. In light of these findings, and withstanding that extrinsic hazards can be controlled unlike intrinsic toxicity, the authors here strongly recommend the application of herbal medicine quality-control measures and solutions to safeguard against a neglected but certainly potentially serious health risk posed to the majority of the global population that consumes herbal medicines.

Correction to: Guizhi-Shaoyao-Zhimu decoction attenuates rheumatoid arthritis partially by reversing inflammation-immune system imbalance.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

[Establishment of quality evaluation methods for pieces and standard decoction of honey-fried Descurainiae Semen].

To establish a content determination method for quality control of the pieces and standard decoction of honey-fried Descurainiae Semen. Standard decoction of honey-fried Descurainiae Semen was prepared with standardized process, and high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode-array detector(HPLC-DAD) was used to detect its characteristic fingerprint and determine the content of quercetin-3-O-ß-D-glucose-7-O-ß-D-gentiobioside. In addition, the transfer rate, dry extract rate and pH value were calculated. The results showed that the established method had a high accuracy. The content of quercetin-3-O-ß-D-glucose-7-O-ß-D-gentiobioside in 13 batches of standard decoction was 0.03-0.12 mg·mL~(-1); the transfer rate was 13.4%-23.1%; the rate of extracts was 1.9%-5.5%, and the pH was between 5.4-5.9. The similarity coefficients were all greater than 0.85, indicating good homogeneity for the different batches of decoction. There were 7 common peaks in the characteristic chromatogram, one of which was quercetin-3-O-ß-D-glucose-7-O-ß-D-gentiobioside. In this paper, the established content determination and quality evaluation method for Descurainiae Semen pieces and decoction was simple, rapid and reproducible, providing reference for the quality control of honey-fried Descurainiae Semen pieces, standard decoction and its preparations.

[Optimization of analysis methods for Astragali Radix and quality evaluation of standard decoction of Astragali Radix].

Astragali Radix is commonly used as bulk medicinal materials. Chinese Pharmacopoeia contains about 150 compound preparations of Astragali Radix, but the sample preparation method under the determination of Astragali Radix content in Chinese Pharmacopoeia is tedious and time-consuming, not convenient for the test of a large number of samples. Therefore, it is of great significance to simplify the sample preparation method and improve the practicability of the method for the quality control of Astragali Radix and its preparations. In this study, ultrasonic extraction method was used instead of heated reflux extraction, and solid phase extraction method was used to enrich and prepare the samples. A set of practical quality evaluation method was established for Astragali Radix slices and standard decoction, greatly shortening the sample preparation time and improving the accuracy of the method. The results of Astragali Radix standard decoction analysis showed that the transfer rate of calycosin 7-O-ß-D-glucospyranoside,(96.5±28.7)%, had great variation, which was found to be related to the conversion of mulberry isoflavone glucoside into calycosin 7-O-ß-D-glucospyranoside during the preparation of standard decoction. The transfer rates were(59.4±14.4)% and(101.3±12.3)% for calycosin and astragaloside Ⅳ respectively, which were relatively stable. Therefore, it is suggested that Astragali Radix slices and water decoction preparations should be evaluated by using calycosin and astragaloside Ⅳ as the quality evaluation index. The results provide a scientific and practical method for quality control of Astragali Radix slices and its standard decoction, and also provide scientific evidence for quality evaluation of the preparations.