General high-performance liquid chromatographic procedures for the rapid screening of natural and synthetic corticosteroids

Analysis of corticosteroids by high performance liquid chromatography–electrospray mass spectrometry

A high performance liquid chromatography electrospray mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS) method, for the detection of corticosteroids in cosmetics has been developed. A water-acetonitrile linear gradient on a C-18 reversed-phase column was found to be suitable in separating triamcinolone and its main derivatives, which greatly differ in lipophilicity. Detection was performed in negative electrospray ionisation mode. Good correlation between peaks areas and solutions concentration was found in the range 0.05-10.0 micro g ml(-1) and the detection limits resulted in the range of 20-45 pg injected. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of real samples of shampoo.

Recent Advances in the Analysis of Steroid Hormones and Related Drugs

The development during the last 15 years and the state-of-the-art in the analysis of bulk steroid hormone drugs and hormone-like structures and pharmaceutical formulations made thereof are summarized. Other steroids (sterols, bile acids, cardiac glycosides, vitamins D) as well as biological-clinical aspects and pharmacokinetic and metabolic studies are excluded from this review. The state-of-the-art is summarized based on comparisons of monographs in the latest editions of the European Pharmacopoeia, United States Pharmacopoeia and the Japanese Pharmacopoeia. This is followed by sections dealing with new developments in the methodology for the fields of spectroscopic and spectrophotometric, chromatographic, electrophoretic and hyphenated techniques as well electroanalytical methods. The review is terminated by two problem-oriented sections: examples on impurity and degradation profiling as well as enantiomeric analysis.

Determination of prednisolone acetate, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine in local pharmaceutical preparations by micellar electrokinetic chromatography

A new, rapid and simple method is described and applied to resolve and quantify mixtures of prednisolone acetate, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine. The determination was accomplished by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MEKC) using a fused silica capillary (57 cm x 75 microm ID). The separation was carried out at 25 degrees C and 30 kV, using a 5 mM phosphate-5 mM borate buffer adjusted to pH 8.2, 40 mM sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) as background electrolyte. Under these conditions, the run time was 6.5 min and the limits of quantification were about 0.5 mg l(-1) for every component. Repeatability and reproducibility studies achieved were showing no significant differences at 95% confidence level. Then, multivariate calibration regression spectrophotometric methods (PLS-1, PLS-2 and PCR) were applied providing, especially PLS-1, a clear example of the high resolving power of these techniques. The MEKC method has been applied for quantifying these compounds in different commercial pharmaceuticals products and the method gave good results when it is compared with the spectrophotometric method. The pharmaceutical preparations do not require any separation step by the two described procedures.

Determination of prednisolone and the most important associated compounds in ocular and cutaneous pharmaceutical preparations by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography

A micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatographic method to separate prednisolone, prednisolone acetate, naphazoline, Zn-bacitracin, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine is described. The separation was carried out by using a fused-silica capillary (57 cmx75 micrometer I.D.) at 25 degrees C and 30 kV, using a 5 mM phosphate-5 mM borate buffer adjusted to pH 8.2, 50 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 10% methanol-water (v/v) as background electrolyte. Under these conditions, the run time was 8 min and the limits of quantification were about 1.0 mg/l for every component. The method was applied to pharmaceutical preparations and the results provided recoveries close to 100% and the method gave good results when compared with a reference multivariate calibration spectrophotometric method.

High-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of corticosteroids

This review presents recent developments in high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis of corticosteroids for the determination of clinically important steroids in biological specimens. Various sample preparation techniques are described.