Quantification of Gymnemagenin and β-Sitosterol in Marketed Herbal Formulation by Validated Normal Phase HPTLC Method

Abstract

This research study describes development and validation of new, rapid, accurate, robust, and precise, high performance thin layer chromatographic (HPTLC) method for concurrent quantitative determination of gymnemagenin and β-sitosterol in herbal formulation with densitometric detection. Chromatographic separation was achieved on Merck aluminum HPTLC plates precoated with silica gel 60 F254. The optimized solvent system consisted of toluene : ethyl acetate : methanol (6.5 : 2.5 : 1.4, v/v/v). Developed plates were derivatized with 5% sulphuric acid reagent followed by heating at 110°C for 4 min in a preheated oven and scanned at 423 nm in reflectance-absorbance mode. The retention factor for gymnemagenin and β-sitosterol was found to be 0.27±0.02 and 0.78±0.02, respectively. The proposed densitometric method was validated according to ICH Q2 (R1) guidelines. Results were found to be linear over a range of 100–1200 ng band−1 and 200–1200 ng band−1 for gymnemagenin and β-sitosterol, respectively. The percent content of gymnemagenin and β-sitosterol in the marketed polyherbal formulation was found to be 0.0405% and 0.1377%, respectively. The proposed HPTLC method can be used for quantification of gymnemagenin and β-sitosterol in marketed polyherbal formulation used in the study in quality-control laboratories.