Development of a Microemulsion High Performance Liquid Chromatography (MELC) Method for Determination of Salbutamol in Metered-Dose Inhalers (MDIS).

INTRODUCTION A sensitive and rapid oil-in-water (O/W) microemulsion high performance liquid chromatography (MELC) method has been developed. The water-in-oil (w/o) microemulsion was used as a mobile phase in the determination of salbutamol in aqueous solutions. In addition, the influence of operating parameters on the separation performance was examined. METHODS The samples were injected into C18, (250mm×4.6mm) analytical columns maintained at 25(o)C with a flow rate 1 ml/min. The mobile phase was 95.5% v/v aqueous orthophosphate buffer 20 mM (adjusted to pH 3 with orthophosphoric acid), 0.5% ethyl acetate, 1.5% Brij35, and 2.5% 1-butanol, all w/w. The salbutamol and internal standard peaks were detected by fluorescence detection at the excitation and emission wavelengths of 267 and 313 nm respectively. RESULTS The method had an accuracy of > 97.78% and the calibration curve was linear (r2 = 0.99) over salbutamol concentrations ranging from 25 to 500 ng/mL. The intra-day and inter-day precisions (CV %) were <1.6 and <1.8, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) were 9.61ng/ml and 29.13ng/ml, respectively. CONCLUSION The method reported is simple, precise and accurate, and has the capacity to be used for determination of salbutamol in the pharmaceutical preparation.