Simultaneous Determination of Curcumin and Berberine in Their Pure Form and from the Combined Extracts of Curcuma Longa and Berberis Aristata

A simple, rapid, accurate, precise, reliable and economical first derivative spectrophotometric method has been proposed for the simultaneous determination of curcumin (CUR) and berberine (BER) in pure form and in combined methanolic extracts of Curcuma longa and Berberis aristata without any prior separation or purification step. The developed methods show best results in terms of linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) for standard laboratory mixtures of pure compounds and methanolic extracts of the drugs. The linearity range for curcumin (CUR) and berberine (BER) were found to be 2 to 8 μg mL-1and 6 to 12 μg mL-1 respectively. The values of LOD were 0.039 μg mL-1 and 0.025 μg mL-1 and the values of LOQ were found to be 0.13 μg mL-1 and 0.08345 μg mL-1 for curcumin (CUR) and berberine (BER) respectively. By this method, C. longa and B. aristata showed 4% w/w curcumin and 2.8% w/w berberine respectively in combined methanolic extracts of the two herbal drugs. The method was validated as per ICH guidelines.