Cost-effective, green HPLC determination of losartan, valsartan and their nitrosodiethylamine impurity: application to pharmaceutical dosage forms.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors are one of the most widely used anti-hypertensive drugs which are used to reduce hypertension. In 2018, the United States Food and Drug Administration together with the European Medicine Agency declared the presence of carcinogenic nitrosamine impurities such as nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA) in some of the products, including valsartan (VLS) and losartan (LOS), and drugs' recall procedures were started. Thus, they should be controlled to be below the acceptable cancer risk level to ensure safety of the pharmaceutical products. Therefore, sensitive and reliable analytical methods were required for detection and quantitation of NDEA in bulk and finished drug products. Green analytical chemistry has received great interest to minimize the amount of organic solvents consumed without loss in chromatographic performance. A green and sensitive HPLC method was developed for the determination of NDEA in LOS and VLS using mobile phase of 0.02 M ammonium acetate adjusted to pH 7.2 and ethanol in gradient manner. Limits of detection and limits of quantification for NDEA were estimated to be 0.2 and 0.5 µg ml-1, respectively. The standardized limits of NDEA impurity in drug substances were set as 0.56 ppm, which indicates the feasibility of its determination by the proposed conventional method without need for expensive instrumentations (e.g. MS/MS detectors) that are not found in most pharmaceutical quality control laboratories.

Chromatographic analysis of some drugs employed in erectile dysfunction therapy: qualitative and quantitative studies using calixarene stationary phase.

In this study, the effect of change in chromatographic process variables on the retention behavior of four drugs employed in erectile dysfunction therapy on a calixarene stationary phase is described. Three of these drugs are known to treat erectile dysfunction, namely, sildenafil citrate, tadalafil, and apomorphine hydrochloride, and one drug that is used as opioid analgesic, tramadol hydrochloride, which is quiet widely misused to treat premature ejaculation. The results indicate the importance of considering the structure and pKa values of drugs to be separated along with mobile phase composition. A new optimized, rapid, and accurate liquid chromatography method is also established for simultaneous determination of sildenafil citrate, tadalafil, and apomorphine hydrochloride in pharmaceutical preparations and bulk powders. The chromatographic separation of the three pharmaceuticals was achieved on a calixarene column in less than 10 min using a binary mobile phase of 35% acetonitrile and 65% 50 mM sodium perchlorate pH2.5 at 1 mL/min flow rate. The method was validated for system efficiency, linearity, accuracy, precision, limits of detection and quantitation, specificity, stability, and robustness. Statistical analysis proved that the method enabled reproducible and selective quantification of all three analytes in bulk drugs and in pharmaceutical preparations.