Quality Assessment of Sitopaladi Churna Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Multivariate Analysis.

"Sitopaladi churna," a well-known formulation of Ayurveda, is prescribed to treat the disease like Bronchitis, Pneumonia, allergic conditions, viral infection of the respiratory tract and as a natural antioxidant. A novel method based on reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) coupled to photodiode array detector was established and validated for sitopaladi churna. Here, HPLC fingerprints data obtained for 28 samples including standard sample were then treated to chemometric analysis like principal component analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis for further analysis to evaluate the differences in market samples of sitopaladi churna. Additionally, one major marker compound, piperine was quantified and it also facilitated for relative retention time. The simulative mean spectrum was also generated. The validation results showed that the developed method was simple, precise and stable. Thus, the developed chromatographic method adjoined with multivariate analysis can be used as an efficient and practical approach for quality assessment of sitopaladi churna.