Palanimuthu Rajeevkumar

The exposure of nutrients as medicines in the pharmaceutical world is of prior importance and centres the attention of scientists and researchers toward the health benefits. The demand of these products has been found to be spiked and due to this, the nutraceutical market has become a million-dollar industry at a global level. Majority of the chemical components present in nutraceuticals that may possess beneficial health effects are derived from botanical sources, and will be considered to be natural in form. These products can be as diverse as proteins, peptides, lipids, flavonoids and isoflavanoids, polyphenols and tannins. Additionally, vitamins and minerals, sugar molecules such as glucosamine and chondroitin. As a result, interdisciplinary approaches are now been put in an application to design and develop various dosage forms to deliver these herbal products for the treatment of many disorders. In this review article, an attempt to classify all types of nutraceuticals, followed by their management in the treatment of various diseases has been carried out. It is also important to note that the purification, or not, of the nutraceutical from its natural matrix must also be considered as there may be contaminants/impurities/adulterants present that are deleterious to human health, or whose amounts are regulated by legislation (heavy metals, allergens, toxins). These must also be incorporated into a testing regime to ensure the safety of the product end-user.

This study describes the development and validation of stability indicating HPLC method for moprolol, an antihypertensive drug. The drug was subjected to stress degradation under different conditions recommended by International Conference on Harmonization. The sample so generated was used to develop a stability-indicating high performance liquid chromatographic method for moprolol. The peak for was well resolved from peaks of degradation products, phenomenex C18 column (250 mm ×4.6 mm, 5 μ) at 370C, using an isocratic mobile phase consisting of mixture of 10 mM potassium dihydrogen phosphate buffer with 0.1% V/V TEA in Milli-Q water (pH 3, adjusted with OPA): ACN: Methanol (50:40:10 %V/V/V) at a flow rate of 1 mL minute-1. The retention times were found to be 3.3 min, respectively. Detection was carried out using photodiode array detector. A linear response (r > 0.99) was observed in the range of 0-40μg/mL. The method was found to be specific and stability-indicating as no interfering peaks of degradants and excipients were observed. The method showed good recoveries (average 99.5%) and relative standard deviation for intra and inter-day were ≤ 2 %. The method was validated for specificity and robustness also.The proposed method is hence suitable for application of degradation kinetics of moprolol under different stress conditions employed. Degradation followed a pseudo-first-order kinetics, and rate constant (k), time left for 50% potency (t1/2) and time left for 90% potency (t90) were calculated. This method can also be applied in quality-control laboratories for quantitative analysis of both the drugs individually and in combination, since it is simple and rapid with good accuracy and precision.