Endurance of biologically active phytomarkers passing through classical drug preparation of Rauwolfia serpentina:An investigation by liquid chromatography in dual mode, planar and column. Names of authors

Abstract Phytocompounds in medicinal plants attribute therapeutic values and are generally called biologically active markers. The fate of marker compounds comes under question when medicinal plants undergo different processes like crushing, grinding, boiling etc. These marker compounds may degrade or decompose and even attain some molecular rearrangement during these processes. As a result, medicinal plants' therapeutic activities may diminish or vanish altogether. Therefore, the efficacy of a particular dosage may not attain as it should possess, and that may be due to the change in the quantity of marker compounds present in the final product or formulation. The present study tried to determine the amount of specific marker reserpine in the root of the Rauwolfia serpentina and sarpagandha ghana satwa (an intermediate prepared from this plant) utilising densitometric HPTLC and HPLC-DAD. The qualitative presence of other secondary metabolites in root and ghana was screened through LC-MS/MS. The study revealed that the quantitative results of HPTLC (0.1742% & 0.1569% for root and ghana , respectively) and HPLC (0.1731% & 0.1535% for root and ghana , respectively) methods were almost similar, and there were no statistically significant differences between the mean values for the root and ghana. The LC-MS/MS data show that there are a few minor changes in the phytochemical array. The set of experiments revealed that secondary metabolites retain their properties in traditional processing.