FORMULATION AND EVALUATION OF HERBAL COUGH REMEDY FROM EXTRACT OF CALENDULA OFFICINALIS L

In the recent years, the interests on the herbal medicines and their utilization for the treatment for various diseases have been increasing rapidly, even in those areas where modern medicine is available. Medicinal plants are the richest source of bioactive compounds used in the traditional and modern medicine. Nowadays, demand for the plant based medicines, health products, pharmaceuticals, food supplements has been increasing due to their effectiveness. The objective of the present study was to formulate and evaluate herbal cough syrup from the petal extracts of Calendula officinalis L. The syrup formulation was designed by using petal extract, honey and required amount of distilled water. The prepared herbal cough syrup was evaluated for different parameters such as pH, color, odor, taste, thermal stability, turbidity, accelerated stability studies, HPTLC and antimicrobial activity against different microbial strains namely Aspergillus niger, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus and E. coli. HPTLC analysis of the prepared formulations was compared with standard marker compound namely Quercetin. The Rf of Quercetin perfectly matched with the spot observed in Formulation A and B. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that the prepared syrup formulation comprising of aqueous extract of C. officinalis exhibited good antimicrobial activity against the selected microbial strains, and it exhibited soothing effect with sweet taste because of honey.