Characterization of Commercial Kava-Kava Herbal Drug and Herbal Drug Preparations by Means of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

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Abstract
The efficiency of one- and two-dimensional NMR experiments in characterizing the content of the constituents of both herbal drugs and herbal drug preparations is demonstrated for kava-kava. These experiments directly detect active constituents represented by kavalactones in both a finely powdered herbal drug and a commercial extract. In addition, NMR spectroscopy can detect all other compounds present in the extract. As previously evidenced, NMR experiments can represent a generally applicable technique for rapid screening and are a complement to the classical analytical techniques such as high-performance thin-layer chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, capillary gas chromatography, and electrophoresis. These experiments can be considered a very simple and fast analytical method to obtain a fingerprint of the herbal drugs and their preparations, and to quantify the content of the active principles of the extract. Keywords: Kava-kava; Piper methysticum G. Forst.; commercial herbal drugs and extracts; 1D-NMR and 2D-NMR experiments; constituent content characterization and quantification