Spectrum–effect relationships between high-performance liquid chromatography fingerprints and anti-inflammatory activities of Leontopodium leontopodioides (Willd.) Beauv.

Leontopodium leontopodioides (Willd.) Beauv. is used therapeutically to prevent numerous diseases. Historically, L. leontopodioides extracts have been used to treat influenza infections, bronchitis, acute and chronic nephritis, proteinuria, hematuria, and diabetes. However, the bioactive compounds that are responsible for the associated therapeutic effects have not yet been characterized. In this study, high-performance liquid chromatography was utilized to study the anti-inflammatory properties of L. leontopodioides through analysis of spectrum-effect relationships. The bioactive compounds that correlated with anti-inflammatory activities were partially identified. Following aqueous extraction, a variety of different polar organic solvents including petrol ether extracts, ethyl acetate extracts, n-butanol extracts, and residual aqueous extracts were successfully isolated from L. leontopodioides. These extracts were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography to generate HPLC fingerprints. A total of 32 common peaks were selected following a similarity analysis (SA). The spectrum-effect relationship was subsequently studied and inflammatory factors were identified following acute inflammatory experiments. The results revealed that the main peaks associated with anti-inflammatory activities were x1, x3, x4, x13, x14, x16 for interleukin-1 (IL-1), x5, x8, x9, x18, x26, x27, x30, x31, x32 for interleukin-6 (IL-6), and x28 and x29 for leukotriene B4 (LTB4). Following analysis of HPLC data, peaks x9 and x14 were identified as chlorogenic acid and ferulic acid, respectively. The current study utilized HPLC and pharmacological analyses to formulate a spectrum-effect relationship and identify bioactive compounds in L. leontopodioides.