The Use of Merbromin Fluorescence Quenching for the Assay of Silymarin in its Natural Source and Pharmaceutical Preparations

Silymarin is a mixture of anti-hepatotoxic polyphenolic substances isolated from the milk thistle plant, Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn. Silymarin is a static quencher, therefore, a new sensitive spectrofluorimetric method for quantitation of silymarin (as a total content) in its natural source and pharmaceutical formulations was developed. The method is based on the fluorescence quenching of merbromin (MER) upon the addition of silymarin....