Mercury based drug in ancient India: The red sulfide of mercury in nanoscale

Priyabrata Mukhi; Swapna Sarita Mohapatra; M Bhattacharjee; K K Ray; T S Muraleedharan; A Arun; R Sathyavathi; R R Juluri; P V Satyam; Alok K Panda; Ashis Biswas; S Nayak; Sreedhar Bojja; S Pratihar; Sujit Roy

doi:10.1016/j.jaim.2017.01.009

Mercury based drug in ancient India: The red sulfide of mercury in nanoscale

J Ayurveda Integr Med. 2017 Apr-Jun;8(2):93-98. doi: 10.1016/j.jaim.2017.01.009. Epub 2017 Jun 7.

Authors

Priyabrata Mukhi¹, Swapna Sarita Mohapatra¹, M Bhattacharjee², K K Ray³, T S Muraleedharan⁴, A Arun⁴, R Sathyavathi⁵, R R Juluri⁶, P V Satyam⁶, Alok K Panda¹, Ashis Biswas¹, S Nayak¹, Sreedhar Bojja⁷, S Pratihar⁸, Sujit Roy⁹

Affiliations

¹ School of Basic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar 751007, India.
² Chemistry Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India.
³ Metallurgical & Materials Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302, India.
⁴ Arya Vaidya Sala, Kottakkal 676503, Kerala, India.
⁵ School of Physics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad 500046, India.
⁶ Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar 751005, India.
⁷ IPC Division, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad 500607, India.
⁸ Department of Chemical Sciences, Tezpur University, 784028, India.
⁹ School of Basic Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar 751007, India. Electronic address: sujitroy.chem@gmail.com.

Abstract

Mercury is one of the elements which had attracted the attention of the chemists and physicians of ancient India and China. Among the various metal based drugs which utilize mercury, we became interested in the red sulfide of mercury which is known in ancient Indian literature as rasasindur (alias rasasindura, rasasindoor, rasasinduram, sindur, or sindoor) and is used extensively in various ailments and diseases. Following various physico-chemical characterizations it is concluded that rasasindur is chemically pure α-HgS with Hg:S ratio as 1:1. Analysis of rasasindur vide Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) showed that the particles are in nanoscale. Bio-chemical studies of rasasindur were also demonstrated. It interacts with Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) with an association constant of (9.76 ± 0.56) × 10³ M^-1 and behaves as a protease inhibitor by inhibiting the proteolysis of BSA by trypsin. It also showed mild antioxidant properties.

Keywords: Mercury sulfide; Nanoparticle; Radical scavenging; Rasasindur.