Cissus quadrangularis extract

Cissus quadrangularis L. is a four-angled succulent climber of the Vitaceae, known in Sanskrit as Asthisamhara and in Hindi as hadjod, and carried in the Ayurvedic Pharmacopoeia of India, Part I, Volume III, as a stem monograph. Thovek extracts the dried aerial parts — principally the characteristic quadrangular stem — with water or ethanol/water, and standardises the concentrate on total ketosterones. Grades run 2.5, 5, 10, 20 and 40 per cent, and native ratio extracts such as 10:1 are produced where a formulator wants the whole matrix rather than a number. It is worth being precise about what 'ketosterones' means, because it is where most specification disputes on this ingredient start. It is a gravimetric total for a 3-ketosteroid fraction, not a single named compound with a CAS number, and two houses running slightly different gravimetric procedures can return different figures on the same drum. Published work has also questioned whether ketosteroid content is the right handle at all, pointing instead to the polyphenol fraction — quercetin, rutin and their glycosides, kaempferol glycosides, catechin and epicatechin, resveratrol, pallidol and quadrangularin A — alongside beta-sitosterol. For that reason Thovek will run an HPLC quercetin figure as a second, compound-specific marker on request, and recommends that buyers write both into the purchase specification rather than relying on the gravimetric number alone. Supply is from Indian-grown material; the plant is native to India and to drier parts of Africa and Asia, and the stem is harvested, dried and size-reduced before extraction. Every lot ships with a botanical identity statement, an assay certificate naming the method used, residual-solvent data and heavy-metal and microbiological results. The material is wholly plant-derived, so it suits vegan and vegetarian formats and carries none of the major food allergens. EU and UK buyers should confirm the novel-food position for their intended food or supplement format with their own regulatory adviser before contracting: Thovek supplies the ingredient and its analytical dossier, not a novel-food dossier, and makes no health claim for it.