Herbal medicines are becoming increasingly popular and more patients are visiting alternative medicine clinics. Under these circumstances it is imperative that people be made aware of the efficacy and safety of the drug. Given the increasing use of herbal medicines, efforts to identify the markers in these extracts have been ongoing. Markers are chemically defined constituents of a herbal drug, which are of interest for control purposes. They do not need to have any therapeutic activity. They serve to calculate the quantity of an herbal drug in the finished product provided that marker has been quantitatively determined in the herb. Consequently, many pharmaceutical companies have introduced standardized extracts of Hypericum perforatum for the treatment of depression. Standardized extracts are more scientific than crude drugs as they provide a definite percentage of the active constituent of the drug.Standardized extracts of Hypericum perforatum are available in the market and fortunately the labels do often show that the product is standardized. However, when these extracts are subjected to analytical tests for determination of active constituents, one of the constituents is often missing. Today, Hypericin 0.3% and Hyperforin 2.8% are considered to be the standards for a typical standardized Hypericum perforatum extracts. The majority of the extracts fail these testing parameters with hyperforin content varying from 2 % to 5 %, or it may be completely absent.
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