Reversed‐phase liquid chromatography without organic solvent for determination of tricyclic antidepressants

Abstract

The chromatographic behavior of seven tricyclic antidepressants (amitryptiline, clomipramine, doxepin, imipramine, maprotiline, nortryptiline, and trimipramine) was examined with micellar mobile phases containing the nonionic surfactant Brij-35. Acetonitrile-water mixtures were also used for comparison purposes. Tricyclic antidepressants are moderately polar basic drugs, which are positively charged in the usual working pH. This gives rise to a strong association with the alkyl chains and residual ionized silanols in silica-based stationary phases, which is translated in a high consumption of organic solvent to get appropriate retention times. Brij-35 modifies the surface of the stationary phases creating a neutral bilayer that masks silanols and reduces the polarity. Consequently, the retention times are decreased. A simple chromatographic procedure for the control of tricyclic antidepressants in pharmaceutical formulations was developed, using 0.02 M Brij-35 at pH 3 and UV detection. Satisfactory recoveries were achieved, with intra- and inter-day relative standard deviations usually below 1 and 2%, respectively. The preparation of the samples was simple and only required solubilization and filtration steps previous to injection. The proposed procedure has the advantage of not using an organic solvent in the mobile phase, and the biodegradable character of Brij-35. This makes an example of "green" liquid chromatographic analysis.

A Novel Nonionic Micellar Liquid Chromatographic Method for Simultaneous Determination of Pseudoephedrine, Paracetamol, and Chlorpheniramine in Cold Compound Preparations

“…[17] Brij-35, in the mobile phase of RP-HPLC, can yield appropriate retention time [14] and produce no ultraviolet absorption. [18] García-Á lvarez-Coque et al [19] developed a reversed-phase liquid chromatography method without organic solvent to determine tricyclic antidepressants. Therefore, Brij-35 is an interesting alternative to the use of SDS in MLC and the procedure with Brij-35 has an advantage of not requiring the addition of an organic solvent to the mobile phase to increase the elution strength.…”

Micellar Liquid Chromatography from Green Analysis Perspective

“…Many MLC methods have been reported for the determination of a wide range of compounds in different pharmaceutical preparations and pure drug substances [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. Although most of these methods used hybrid mobile phases containing SDS as a surfactant, some of them also used Brij-35 [33,37,42] and Tween-20 [35,40,46,48].…”

“…Although most of these methods used hybrid mobile phases containing SDS as a surfactant, some of them also used Brij-35 [33,37,42] and Tween-20 [35,40,46,48]. Among such methods, Memon et al [37] studied the non-ionic surfactant Brij-35 for its selectivity in the separation of positional isomers.…”

Isocratic and gradient elution in micellar liquid chromatography with Brij-35

“…In our laboratory, we have developed a method for the analysis of apolar tricyclic antidepressants, using purely micellar mobile phases of Brij‐35 . A study of the effect of temperature on the isocratic elution of flavonoids with purely micellar mobile phases of Brij‐35 was also carried out, where a significant enhancement in the efficiency was observed by increasing the column temperature up to 80°C, approaching the performance achieved in aqueous‐organic RPLC .…”