ABSTRACT

A rapid, precise, robust, and selective HPTLC technique has been developed for the simultaneous estimation of ellagic acid and berberine from a marketed polyherbal formulation. Chromatographic separation was performed over pre-coated silica gel TLC plates, via a linear ascending technique using toluene, ethyl acetate, acetic acid and formic acid as the mobile phase. Detection and quantification were achieved at 286 nm by spectro-densitometric analysis. Analytical performance of the proposed HPTLC method was validated according to the ICH guidelines for linearity, accuracy, precision, detection and quantitation limits, robustness and specificity. The regression analysis data indicated a good linear relationship for the calibration plots for ellagic acid and berberine in the range of 200-800 ng spot^-1 each, and regression coefficients were 0.9924 and 0.9951, respectively. The proposed method can also be used for the estimation of these phytoconstituents in other polyherbal formulations.