High-performance Thin-layer Chromatography in the Standardization of Homoeopathic Mother Tinctures Used for Lower Respiratory Disorders: Current Applications, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Abstract Lower respiratory disorders are chronic and severe conditions including bronchitis, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, bronchiolitis, and other respiratory infections, which continue to pose a significant global health burden. Homoeopathic mother tinctures obtained from numerous medicinal plants are frequently used as complementary therapeutic preparations for the management of these lower respiratory conditions. To ensure the quality, safety, and consistency of these plant-derived preparations, rigorous standardization of botanical raw materials and manufacturing processes is essential. These herbal mother tinctures contain more than one bioactive compound with complex phytochemical composition, requiring modern and advanced analytical techniques to ensure their quality, identity, purity, strength, and authentication. High-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) has emerged as a rapid, economical, and reproducible analytical tool for the standardization and quantification of herbal medicines through phytochemical fingerprinting and marker-based evaluation. This review summarizes the role of HPTLC in the quality control and safety assessment of homeopathic mother tinctures used for lower respiratory disorders. It highlights the principles of HPTLC, its applications in botanical authentication, phytochemical fingerprinting, marker compound identification, adulteration detection, and analytical validation. The review also discusses Pharmacopoeial standards, quality assurance approaches, and analytical challenges associated with phytochemical variability and harmonisation of analytical methods. In addition, recent technological developments such as chemometric analysis, advanced hyphenated analytical techniques, and digital fingerprint databases are explored as future approaches to enhance the standardization of homeopathic mother tinctures. The review emphasizes the potential of HPTLC as a robust quality assessment tool for ensuring standardization and reproducibility of homoeopathic preparations intended for respiratory healthcare.