ABSTRACT
Background: Trikatu, Sitopaladi, Hingavastaka, Avipattikara, Sringyadi and Talisadya are very popular Ayurvedic (churna) medicines practiced in India; however, unfortunately, they possess several qualitycontrol issues.Objective: The aim of this study was to find out a simple, accurate and sensitive HPTLC method for thedetection and quantification of marker molecule, piperine (alkaloid) on these Ayurvedic formulations forstandardization.Materials and methods: Methanolic extraction (reflux) was performed from the above six churnas as wellas three single ingredients Piper longum (pipul), Piper nigrum (marich) and Piper chaba (chai). HPTLC wasdone using piperine as a standard. The mobile phase was a mixture of toluene-ethyl acetate (7:3, v/v) anddetection at 342l.Results: The Rf was detected at 0.39. Piperine was quantified in all samples. P. nigrum showed higherpiperine than P. longum and P. chaba. The maximum piperine was noted in Hingavastaka churna andfollowed by Sringyadi churna, Sitopaladi churna, Talisadya churna, Trikatu churna and Avipattikara churna.Conclusion: This method can be successfully employed for standardization and quantitative analysis ofpiperine in Ayurvedic formulations (churnas) and also be helpful to clinicians and pharmacists to drawsignificant role of piperine present in all these samples.© 2017 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Publishing Services byElsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).