Simultaneous, stability indicating, HPLC-DAD determination of guaifenesin and methyl and propyl-parabens in cough syrup

A stability indicating high performance liquid chromatography procedure has been developed for the simultaneous determination of guaifenesin (GUA), methyl p-hydroxybenzoate (MHB) and propyl p-hydroxybenzoate (PHB) in a commercial cough syrup dosage form. The method was specific and stability indicating as chromatographic conditions were selected to provide adequate separation of GUA, MHB and PHB from the putative degradation products guaiacol (GUAI) and p-hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA) as well as from excipients. The isocratic separation and quantitation were achieved within 17 min on a 150-mm column with an ether-linked phenyl stationary phase and a hydrophilic endcapping. The mobile phase was constituted of eluant A: aqueous phosphate buffer (pH 3.0, 10 mM)/acetonitrile 25/75 (v/v) and eluant B:methanol; the A:B ratio was 85:15 (v/v) with a flow rate 1 ml min^-1 and detection of analytes at 254 and 276 nm. The method showed good linearity for the GUA-MHB-PHB mixture in the 95-285, 4-12, and 1-3 μg ml^-1 ranges, respectively, being all the square of the correlation coefficients greater than 0.999. The interday R.S.D.s were 1.17, 1.14, and 0.91%, for GUA, MHB, and PHP, respectively. The method demonstrated also to be accurate; indeed the average recoveries, at 100% of the target assay concentration, were 100.5, 100.3, and 100.7% with relative standard deviations of 0.8, 0.7, and 0.4% for GUA, MHB, and PHB, respectively, from laboratory prepared samples. The applicability of the method was evaluated in commercial dosage form analysis as well as in stability studies.