Differentiation of five commercially available triphala churnas of an ayurvedic formulation by elemental fingerprint

Abstract

Introduction: Triphala churna (TPC) is one of the well known Ayurvedic powdered preparations of Indian System of Medicine and is used in the treatment of various diseases. Elemental pattern of TPC was developed in order to investigate the identity and quality of commercial TPC drugs. Method: Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was used for the quantitative determination of ten essential and trace elements in five marketed samples of Triphala churna. The concentration patterns of these elements were deciphered by multivariate statistical analysis such as hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), fuzzy c-means (FCM) and k-means (KM) cluster analysis. Results: The elemental concentrations ranged from 1.3 mg/kg (Cr, TPC3) to 14220 mg/kg (K, TPC4). The elemental fingerprint of Triphala churna was established based on three churnas viz. TPC1, TPC3 and TPC5, which were found in one cluster with a very high degree of similarity by KM, FCM and HCA techniques. Conclusion: Based on the results, the graphical pattern of elements detected in these samples can be considered as elemental fingerprint of Triphala churna and can be used for authentication and/or to determine the quality of commercial TPC drugs.