PHYTOCHEMICAL FINGERPRINTING FOR EARLY DETECTION OF TOXICITY IN MEDICINAL PLANTS: AN INTEGRATED DRAVYAGUNA AND MODERN TOXICOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Medicinal plants possess complex and dynamic phytochemical profiles that contribute to their therapeutic activity as well as, in certain circumstances, their toxicological potential. Variations in plant species, geographical origin, season, cultivation conditions, harvesting stage, processing and storage can alter the qualitative and quantitative composition of secondary metabolites. Conventional quality control approaches based on individual marker compounds may therefore be insufficient to represent the overall chemical complexity of medicinal plants. Phytochemical fingerprinting, using chromatographic and spectrometric techniques such as TLC/HPTLC, HPLC, GC-MS, LC-MS/MS and NMR, provides a broader approach for characterizing the chemical profile of herbal materials. WHO recognizes chromatographic fingerprinting and spectroscopic/spectrometric approaches among methods used for quality control of herbal materials and products. The integration of phytochemical fingerprints with toxicological markers may facilitate the early recognition of potentially unsafe samples before clinical toxicity becomes evident. Evidence from medicinal plants containing aristolochic acids demonstrates how chromatographic fingerprinting and multivariate analysis can assist in detecting toxic constituents, while mass-spectrometric approaches have been used for characterization of other toxic phytochemical groups such as pyrrolizidine alkaloids. This review discusses the conceptual relationship between Ayurvedic Dravya identification, Rasa-Panchaka, phytochemical markers and modern toxicological profiling, and proposes an integrated framework for safety-oriented phytochemical fingerprinting of medicinal plants.