Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Comparison of Popular Herbal Shampoo Brands with Synthetic Shampoo Brands of India

Abstract

The most popular type of hair care is shampooing. Shampoos are basically hair and scalp washing agents. There are numerous shampoo brands on the market that cater to various hair issues. One such categorization is herbal and synthetic shampoos where former claim to be prepared from natural ingredients and more safer for human use while latter are prepared entirely from range of synthetic chemicals/compounds and sometimes assumed to show allergic reaction or side effects on hair and scalp in long run usage. This study intends to assess specific shampoos based on their physicochemical characteristics, pH measurement, percentage of solid content, cleansing performance, dirt dispersion, foaming ability and foam persistence, and skin irritancy. These parameters were selected to cover evaluation of visual appearance, efficacy as well as safety issues related to herbal and synthetic class and how far they justify their claims. Six shampoo brands from each category i.e. Patanjali’s Keshkanti, Vatika, Chik hair solutions from herbal category and Clinic Plus, Dove, Sunsilk from synthetic category were procured from market and evaluated for above said tests. All shampoos were found to perform well in most tests with some surpassing others in one or another factor with mild variation. But since none particular test be considered more important than other hence giving a composite score to shampoos based on all tests is impossible. Overall, all shampoos of both categories were found to contain each ingredient within specified limit and none showed skin irritancy hence could be considered safe.