Validation of a micellar liquid chromatographic method for determination of caffeine and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories.

An accurate, simple, sensitive and selective micellar liquid chromatographic method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of caffeine (CAF) and two non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, namely ibuprofen (IBU) and ketoprofen (KET). The chemometric approach was applied to the optimization of separation of the studied drugs. To optimize their separation, the effect of six experimental parameters on retention was investigated by means of multivariate analysis. Separation was conducted using an ODS C18 (150 × 4.6 mm i.d.) stainless steel column at ambient temperature with UV detection at 260 nm. A mobile phase composed of 40 mM sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), 10% 1-propanol and 0.3% tri-ethylamine in 0.02 M phosphoric acid adjusted to pH 3 has been used at a flow rate of 1 mL/min. Regression models were characterized by both descriptive and predictive ability (R(2) ≥ 97.9% and R(cv)(2) ≥ 96.2%) and allowed the chromatographic separation of the drugs with a good resolution and a total analysis time within 15 min. The calibration curves were rectilinear over the concentration ranges of 2.0-25.0, 1.5-15.0 and 1.0-10.0 µg/mL for IBU, KET and CAF, respectively, with detection limits of 1.2, 1.0 and 0.6 µg/mL, and quantification limits of 1.6, 1.2 and 0.8 µg/mL, respectively. The results obtained were in good agreement with those obtained by the comparison method.