Ginkgo biloba products are one of the top ten botanical dietary supplements in the USA. The active constituents include flavonoids and terpene lactones (ginkgolides and bilobalide). Ginkgo flavonoids have been associated with reduced lipid peroxidation in vascular walls and nerve cells. Ginkgolides are well known to be antagonists of platelet-activating factor (PAF). Usually, enriched ginkgo extracts used for the preparation of ginkgo products are standardized to contain 24% flavonoids and 6% terpene lactones. In the present work, we examined nine commercial ginkgo products for the content of total flavonoids and terpene lactones by using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) and evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD), respectively. The methods are reliable and sensitive with detection limits of 2 ng for flavonoids on column with HPLC-UV and 20–35 ng for terpene lactones on column with HPLC-ELSD. The results show that most of the commercial ginkgo products tested contain flavonoids and terpene lactones as claimed on the label.
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Li et al. (2002) studied this question.
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