Standardization of Prasaplai, a Thai traditional preparation for antidysmenorrhea

Abstract

Prasaplai is a Thai traditional medicine preparation that has been used to treat dysmenorrhea for several decades. The preparation is composed of ten herbs and two compounds. Due to factors such as the inconsistency of active ingredients in raw materials, and the biological efficacy and reproducibility of therapeutic effects, traditional medicine preparations are required to be qualitatively and quantitatively standardized by modern methods so that they become more widely accepted. The prominent methods of choice are high-performance liquid chromatography and thin-layer densitometry. Each component of Prasaplai was collected from ten different locations in Thailand, and the amounts of active constituents in each of the component were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography. Prasaplai preparation also contains artifacts, which are formed during storage. These artifacts were evaluated periodically within 1 year of storage. Different extracting solvents for Prasaplai preparation were also analyzed to avoid the artifacts.