Ginkgo Biloba Pharmaceutical Grade

Before we discuss the Ginkgo Biloba pharmaceutical grade, it is very important to understand what is pharmaceutical grade or pharmaceutical grading.

Pharmaceutical grading is a method for manufacturing and identifying processed botanical supplies for use in clinical practice and patient treatment.

The technique utilizes fingerprints of the processed botanical substance with respect to bioactivity with composition to ascertain whether the material meets formerly established pharmaceutical grade requirements.

The method is applicable to processed botanical materials, such as plant extracts, powders and the like which are used in medicinal applications.

Pharmaceutical grading is carried out to check whether Ginkgo Biloba material is an alcoholic extract or is an aqueous or organic extract or is a supercritical carbon dioxide extract or is oil or is a powdered plant material or is a homogeneous material or is a mixture of plant material.

Whether at least one active component is a lactone or is a ginkgolide. If Ginkgolide than what type; whether the ginkgolide is ginkgolide A or is ginkgolide B or is ginkgolide C. Or it can be a bilobalide.

There is a proper method for determining whether a Ginkgo Biloba material is a pharmaceutical grade ginkgo, the method comprising the steps of :

sorting out a representative aliquot of the ginkgo material having a bioactivity into a plurality of marker fractions, which ginkgo material comprises a plurality of components, wherein at least one marker fraction comprises at least one active component ;determining the bioactivity of at least one marker fraction to provide a bioactivity fingerprint of the representative aliquot ;and comparing the bioactivity fingerprint of the representative aliquot to a bioactivity fingerprint standard which has been established for a pharmaceutical grade ginkgo to determine whether the ginkgo material is a pharmaceutical grade ginkgo.

The additional steps are determining an amount of an active component in at least one marker fraction to provide a quantitative compositional fingerprint of the representative aliquot; and comparing the quantitative compositional fingerprint of the representative aliquot to a quantitative compositional fingerprint standard which has been established for a pharmaceutical grade ginkgo to determine whether the ginkgo material is a pharmaceutical grade ginkgo.

Further tests are taken in order to make sure what components/ingredients are present in Ginkgo Biloba extracts. The components so far known are amentoflavone, anacardic acid, bilobalide,-aminobutyric acid, ginkgolide A, ginkgolide B, ginkgolide C, glutamic acid, glutamine, hinokiflavone, isorhamnetin, kaempferol, proline and quercetin.

Further studies are still in progress to make sure the presence of any other components and the usage of right component for the disease. As these components are different to one another in their pharmacological properties so researches are still required to check which disease gets cured better by which component so as to treat it right.

Apart from selecting the right component for the right disease, studies are also done in order to check for the right dosage and the right administration form to make it pharmacologically acceptable. Another part of pharmaceutical grading is hence making the component acceptable in both medical and pharmacological terms.