Unremitting Problems with Chlorogenic Acid Nomenclature: A Review

Abstract

This paper summarizes a problematic nomenclature of isomers belonging to chlorogenic acid family since its first occurrence until present. During decades, there have been a high number of articles dealing with the family. Unfortunately, researchers who want to get knowledge about this topic may be strongly confused after reading a few articles. Due to gradual discoveries and isolations of the individual isomers from plenty of matrices and because of the changing system of terminology after these discoveries, discrepancies among articles are common. The cause of this confusion is that the main compound of the family, 5-caffeoylquinic acid (also well-known as chlorogenic acid), was truly called as 3-caffeoylquinic acid before 1976, when new rules for nomenclature were published. Many researchers and also chemicals suppliers, however, keep using the "pre-IUPAC" nomenclature and wrongly call 3-caffeoylquinic acid as chlorogenic acid, the main substituent of the family. Despite there have been some works struggling with this issue, the problem is still appearing. Therefore, the present work was written.