Drug adulteration: A threat to efficacy of ayurveda medicine

Abstract

Even though Ayurveda has gained popularity among the medicinal systems there is a hindrance to its further development. One of the burning problems is the practice of adulteration which creates doubts and disbelief in the curative capability of traditional systems.In the present work methods & reasons for adulteration are described. The efficacies of Ayurvedic Products are critically dependent on an uninterrupted availability of herbs. The unethical practice of adulteration by the drug manufacturers would not only reduce the efficacy of the drugs but also affect the trust of the people in the traditional healthcare systems. Adulteration may be evaluated by different methods like morphological or organoleptic tests, microscopic evaluation, chemical evaluation, physical evaluation, chromatography, spectrophotometry etc. The solution lies in ensuring the availability of crude drugs. Studies on adulteration practices will have to be taken up along with identification of the scares drugs. Conservation measures of their natural habitat & ex-situ medicinal plant cultivation may have to be taken up in large scale.