Application of Fingerprint Analysis of Inorganic Elements in Identification of Sodium Hyaluronate

An inorganic element fingerprint analysis on sodium hyaluronate (SH), a biomedical polymer material was performed. Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), ion chromatography (IC), and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) were used to measure the sodium, chlorine, and other 70 kinds of inorganic elements in 13 batches of SH samples from 6 companies. Multiple statistical methods such as principal component analysis (PCA), partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), and cluster analysis, etc., were used to establish the inorganic element fingerprint map of SH. The experimental results showed significant differences in inorganic element content and species among SH samples produced by different manufacturers. PLS-DA technique could effectively distinguish these samples, with a cross-validation accuracy of 84.6%. Among them, the contents of elements Li, Ca, Nb and P played an important role in sample classification. Overall, inorganic element fingerprint analysis technique had important application value in identification and quality assessment of SH.