Planta Med 2010; 76 - P28
DOI: 10.1055/s-0030-1251790

Chemical Fingerprinting Analysis of Commiphora wightii, its Possible Adulterant Species and Quantitation of E- and Z-guggulsterone by HPLC-UV Method

R Ahmed 1, 3, YH Wang 1, Z Ali 1, TJ Smillie 1, MI Choudhary 3, A Rahmna 3, IA Khan 1, 2
  • 1National Center for Natural Products Research, Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
  • 2Department of Pharmacognosy, School of Pharmacy, University of Mississippi, MS 38677, USA
  • 3H. E. J. Research Institute of Chemistry, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan

Commiphora wightii (Arnott) Bhandari, commonly known as guggul, is an important medicinal plant belonging to the Burseraceae family and used extensively in Ayurvedic folk medicines in India. Gugglul-gum resin is used in mixtures with powders or extracts of other crude drugs for the treatment of anti-obesity, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-coagulant, and anti-therosclerosis [1,2].

The standard compounds 8a-hydroxypregnene-4,6-diene-3,20-dione (1), diasesartemin (2), sesamin (3), 20-acetyloxy-4-pregnene-3,16-dione (4), E-guggulsterone (5), Z-guggulsterone (6), guggulsterol III (7), 5-(11′Z-heptadecenyl) resorcinol (8), (13E,17E,21E)-ploypodo-13, 17, 21-trien-3,8-diol (9), (13E,17E,21E)-8-hydroxypolypodo-13,17,21-trien-3-one (10), mangiferolic acid (11) and 5-(13′Z-nanodecenyl) resorcinol (12) were isolated from commercial C. wightii resins. A reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatographic method coupled with a PDA detector was developed for chemical fingerprinting analysis of C. wightii and the quantitation of E- and Z-guggulsterones in different C. wightii samples. The analysis was performed on a Waters 2695 HPLC system with a C-18 stationary column. The mobile phase is composed of water and acetonitrile, both containing 0.1% acetic acid. The column temperature was maintained at 38°C. Quantitative method of E- and Z-guggulsterones was validated for linearity, repeatability, limits of detection (LOD) and limits of quantification (LOQ). The LOD and LOQ of E- and Z-guggulsterones were found to be 0.1µg/mL and 0.5µg/mL, respectively. The developed HPLC-UV method was successfully applied for the analysis of 22 C. wightii samples, as well as 9 samples of possible adulterant species.

Fig.1: HPLC-UV Chromatograms of standards (A) and extracts of C. wightii (B) at 205nm (1) and 243nm (2)

Acknowledgements: This research is supported in part by „Science Based Authentication of Dietary Supplements“ and „Botanical Dietary Supplement Research“ funded by the Food and Drug Administration grant numbers 5U01FD002071–09 and 1U01FD003871–01, and the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Specific Cooperative Agreement No. 58–6408–2-0009. References: [1] Haque I, et al. (2009) Chromatographia 70(11–12): 1613–1619. [2] Kimura I, et al. (2001) Bioorg Med Chem Lett, 11(8): 985–989.