Recent analytical techniques in quality control of indigenous system of medicine

Indigenous System of Medicine is gaining more and more attention towards its use allover the world, due to fewer side effects and less cost. Quality control of these medicines is the prominent part of this system of medicine for modernization and globalization. There are various analytical techniques available presently and screening of bioactive markers and compounds having therapeutic effects. Many hyphenated techniques are used for the quantitative determination of active principle in the drugs and also evaluating the therapeutic efficacy of the compounds, used against various diseases which prone to every layman. The comprehensive methods, such as fingerprint and multicomponent quantification are emphasized; generating the fingerprint profile is very much essential now-adays. Hyphenated techniques like HPLC-MS, LC-MS-MS, GC-MS, CE-MS, LC-NMR, chemometric methods, and combination of chemical and biological methods such as biofingerprint, metabolic fingerprint are now more and more widely used. Therefore, the analysis and quality control of herbal medicines towards an integrative and comprehensive direction is needed, in order to better address the inherent holistic nature of drugs in traditional medicines.