白花蛇舌草Hedyotis diffusa与水线草H.corymbosa同为茜草科（Rubiaceae）耳草属Hedyotis Linn.植物，均具有清热解毒功效，且有一定的抗肿瘤活性，故水线草常作为白花蛇舌草的替代品使用，目前关于二者替代使用的可行性和合理性尚无定论。鉴于此，从本草考证、药用沿革、混用情况、商品状况、性状及显微特征、化学成分、药理活性等方面对二者进行系统比较，发现二者性状、显微特征较为相似，但成分、活性等方面存在较为明显的差异，可以通过分子鉴定方法对二者进行快速鉴别，故建议二者在使用上应予以区别。

Hedyotis diffusa and H. corymbosa belong to the genus Hedyotis Linn. in family Rubiaceae. They shared similar heat-clearing and toxin-resolving effects and pharmacological activities, such as anti-cancer activity, and H. diffusa is frequently adulterated or substituted by H. corymbosa in clinical application. But whether they can completely replace with each other or whether the therapeutic effect could be changed after the substitution, is still a problem needs to be resolved. Therefore, the two herbs were compared in terms of the textual research, medical history, mixed use, commercial medicine status, macro-characters, micro-characteristic, chemical compositions and pharmacologic activities, and found that they shared similar macro-characters and micro-characteristic but were obviously different in chemical composition and pharmacologic activities, and now they could be identified quickly and accurately by molecular identification method. Therefore, we suggest that they should be used as two different medicinal materials at this stage.

国家自然科学基金海外及港澳学者合作研究基金（81628016）