ABSTRACT
Background: Anu Tailam, an Ayurvedic medicated oil where ‘anu’ meant for atom and ‘tailam’ meant foroil and virtually meant for ‘oil of subtle or atomic size particles’. Since the major active ingredients in thisformulation are incorporated from the polyherbal decoction, it is expected to contain predominantlywater soluble ingredients.Objectives: It is hypothesized that these polar active botanical ingredients are present in the formulationshould be either suspended in the form of submicron particles or entrapped in the submicron vesicularstructures since the formulation did not show any precipitation or phase separation instead showed amonophasic oily liquid with very little moisture.Materials and Methods: In the present investigation, the micro architecture of the anu tailam is studiedvia column chromatography and high performance thin layer chromatography to prove the contents arepolar hydrophilic compounds followed by optical microscopy, photon correlation Spectroscopy (PCS) andenvironmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) to study the particle/vesicle size of the formulation.Results: In this study, it was proved that the formulation contained only polar ingredients and can beextracted in polar solvents like methanol and ethanol. It was also found that the formulation taken forstudy contained nano particles of the active botanical ingredients embedded in a network of vesicularstructures of the lipid base.Conclusion: The selected Ayurvedic formulation ‘anutailam’ found to contain novel nano drug deliverysystem to deliver water soluble ingredients across barriers.