ABSTRACT:
A fast, simple, precise and accurate high performance thin layer chromatographic method was developed and validated for the simultaneous estimation of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine in combined tablet dosage form. The method employed pre-coated silica gel 60F254 plate as stationary phase and a mixture of ethyl acetate: glacial acetic acid (9.5: 0.5 v/v) as mobile phase. The plate was scanned and quantified at 205 nm. The two drugs were satisfactorily resolved with Rf 0.48 for paracetamol, 0.75 for ibuprofen and 0.17 for caffeine respectively. Linearity was found to be in the range of 300-1100 ng/band for paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine respectively. Intra-day and inter-day precision in %RSD were found to be 1.21-1.62% for paracetamol, 1.16-1.50% for ibuprofen and 1.29-1.64% for caffeine respectively. The developed method was validated for linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection and limit of quantitation, specificity, robustness parameters as per ICH guidelines. The correlation coefficient of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine were found to be 0.9995, 0.9991 and 0.9992 respectively. The average percentage recovery of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine was found to be 100.25%, 99.67% and 99.63% respectively. The proposed HPTLC method has potential applications for routine simultaneous analysis of paracetamol, ibuprofen and caffeine in combined marketed tablet dosage form.