Development of standardization of trikatu churna: A spectrophotometric approach

Abstract

Churnas are important group of formulations used by Ayurvedic and Siddha physicians to treat various types of diseases. Trikatu Churna is an important ayurvedic formulation, is official in ayurvedic formulary of India is combination of three reputed herbs, comprised of the fruits Piper longum, Piper nigrum and rhizomes of Zingiber officinale was estimated by High Performance Liquid Chromatography for its total Piperine content. This study was aimed to develop finger printing methods for well known Ayurvedic formulation. Three laboratory batch of Trikatu Churna were estimated for their Piperine content against standard Piperine solution by High Performance Liquid Chromatography at λ_max 342-343nm. The concentration of Piperine in raw material was found to be 1.4±0.010% w/w in Piper longum fruits and 3.8±0.088 in Piper nigrum fruits respectively. The content of Piperine in laboratory formulation and marketed formulation were found to be 0.0062±0.050%w/w, 0.0074±0.021%w/w and 0.0056±0.032% w/w respectively. In order to obtain accuracy and precision the recovery study was performed and result obtained with mean value 99.35±0.25%, which proves reproducibility of the result. This shows significant precision of methods at 95% confidence level. Results of statistical analysis show present HPLC method for determination of Piperine is simple, sensitive, precise and accurate and can be adopted for routine quality control of Trikatu Churna and Piperine can be used as a possible marker compound for fingerprinting of Trikatu churna.