Establishing the Antidiabetic Potential of Marketed Product Diabex Capsules and Standardization of its Physicochemical Parameters

The present investigation was undertaken with an objective to standardize and validate a self proclaimed proprietary medicine promoted online by the name of Diabex capsule (DC), available for management of diabetes. The procured capsules of DC were evaluated for texture, color, taste and odor. Total ash value of is an indication of the amount of minerals and earthy materials present in the formulations. DC exhibited 9.3 % total ash with 3.16 % acid insoluble ash and 5.08 % water soluble ash. The water soluble and alcohol soluble extractives were 1.48 % and 1.42 % respectively suggesting the formulation to be suitable for human use. The powder of DC was subjected to various chemical tests for preliminary screening of the class of phytoconstituents present in them. The spot for quercetin appeared at Rf value of 0.83 on the TLC plate. The peak at 5.048 min was found due to the presence of quercetin in DC. The quantitation of the quercetin was done from the calibration curve of peak area obtained from standard quercetin and it was found that DC contained 1.89 mg quercetin per 250 mg of DC (0.756 %). A glucose tolerance test determines the blood glucose level in fasting condition then after 2 hours of drinking a solution of glucose in specific quantity. Alloxan is considered to be the most common chemical substance to induce diabetes in experimental animals. DC was able to decrease blood sugar by 35.03% while the standard drug glibenclamide could reduce it by 42.54%. This makes it evident that the polyherbal formulation DC was almost equipotent to the standard drug. Key words: Antidiabetic, Diabex, Standardization, Physicochemical, Capsule, WHO