Poria cocos (Schw.) Wolf (PC) is a well-known saprophytic fungus, and its sclerotium without the epidermis (PCS) is widely used in traditional Chinese medicine and as a functional food in many countries. PCS is normally collected from multiple geographical regions, but whether and how the quality of PCS correlates with where it grows have not been determined. This correlation could be significant both for quality control and optimum utilization of PCS as a natural resource. In this study, a qualitative fingerprint profiling method performed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC) with diode array detection (DAD) combining quadrupole time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS/MS) and a quantitative UHPLC coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (QqQ-MS/MS) approach were established to investigate whether and how the quality of PCS correlates with its collection location. A standard fingerprint of PCS was generated by median simulation of 25 tested samples collected from four main producing areas of China, and similarity analysis was applied to evaluate the similarities between the fingerprints of samples and the standard fingerprint. Twenty three common peaks occurring in the fingerprint were unequivocally or tentatively identified by UHPLC-QTOF-MS/MS. Meanwhile, principal component analysis (PCA), supervised orthogonal partial least squares-discriminate analysis (OPLS-DA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were employed to classify 25 batches of PCS samples into four groups, which were highly consistent with the four geographical regions. Ten compounds were screened out as potential markers to distinguish the quality of PCS. Nine triterpene acids, including five compounds that played important roles in the clusters between different samples collected from the four collection locations, were simultaneously quantified by using the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode of UHPLC-QqQ-MS/MS. The current strategy not only clearly expounded the correlation between quality and geographical origins of PCS, but also provided a fast, accurate and comprehensive qualitative and quantitative method for assessing the quality of PCS.

Background and purpose: Short-term external counterpulsation (ECP) noninvasively augments cerebral blood flow by elevating blood pressure in ischemic stroke. The current retrospective case–control study examined the effect of long-term ECP treatment on blood pressure and beat-to-beat blood pressure variability (BPV) in patients with recent ischemic stroke. Method: The ECP group included data from 20 recent ischemic stroke patients who received five daily 1 h sessions each week for seven weeks, for a total of 35 sessions of ECP treatment from our ECP registry. An equivalent comparative control group without ECP treatment was composed from the same pool of patients and matched with cases by sex and age. Beat-to-beat heart rate and blood pressure were monitored before and after the long-term intervention. Power spectral analysis calculated the beat-to-beat BPV oscillations at very low frequency (VLF; <0.04 Hz), low frequency (LF; 0.04–0.15 Hz), high frequency (HF; 0.15–0.40 Hz), and the total power spectral density (TP; <0.40 Hz) and LF/HF ratio. Result: There was a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure (SBP) after the intervention compared with that before intervention in both groups (p < 0.05), but only the ECP group displayed a statistically significant reduction in diastolic blood pressure (DBP) (p = 0.023). The changes in SBP and DBP (delta SBP and delta DBP) from pre-intervention to completion showed no significant differences between the two groups (all p > 0.05). The ECP group exhibited a more pronounced and significant decrease in each spectral component of BPV after the intervention than at pre-intervention, with a substantial decrease in systolic BPV at TP (p = 0.048) and in the LF/HF ratios (p = 0.021 in diastolic BPV and p = 0.004 in systolic BPV, respectively) compared to the control group. Conclusions: A standard 35-session ECP treatment decreases beat-to-beat BPV but does not change SBP and DBP in patients with recent ischemic stroke. This implies that long-term ECP treatment may enhance autonomic regulation to benefit post-stroke clinical outcomes.