Isolation and TLC densitometric quantification of gallicin, gallic acid, lupeol and β-sitosterol from Bergia suffruticosa, a hitherto unexplored plant

Bergia suffruticosa (Elatinaceae family) is an important Indian medicinal plant hitherto unexplored for its chemical constituents and its pharmacological activity. In the present paper we report our work on isolation of gallicin, gallic acid, lupeol and beta-sitosterol from the plant. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of these four compounds from this plant. Further, these four marker compounds were quantified by thin layer chromatography densitometric methods using high performance thin layer chromatography. The thin layer chromatography densitometric methods were found to be precise with RSD for intra-day in the range of 0.61-1.83, 1.14-1.57, 0.38-0.52 and 0.15-0.52 and for inter-day in the range of 0.97-1.45, 0.58-1.27, 0.42-0.50 and 0.26-0.61 for different concentrations of gallicin, gallic acid, lupeol and beta-sitosterol. Instrumental precision was 1.05, 1.20, 0.65 and 0.85 (% RSD) for gallicin, gallic acid, lupeol and beta-sitosterol. Accuracy of the method was checked by conducting recovery studies at three different levels for the four compounds and the average percentage recoveries obtained were 99.89, 100.58, 99.79 and 100.11%. B. suffruticosa sample was found to contain 0.34% w/w of gallicin, 0.288% w/w of gallic acid, 0.064% w/w of lupeol and 0.034% w/w of beta-sitosterol.