APPLICATION OF SELECTIVE HYPROMELLOSE SORBENT FOR THE SALICYLIC ACID QUANTITATION IN PHARMACEUTICAL FORMULATIONS
Authors: М. N. Kachalkin 
Published: February 2024

Introduction. In quality control of pharmaceutical formulations, there are methodological approaches based on the preliminary separation of sample components and approaches without preliminary separation. The use of solid-phase extraction (SPE) allows to separate analytes during sample preparation, with the separation selectivity determining the analysis selectivity as a whole. Currently, sorbents that provide selectivity in interaction with the analyte are of interest. Various derivatives of cellulose are used to obtain selective sorbents: ethylcellulose, hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (hypromellose), carboxymethylcellulose, etc.
On the pharmaceutical market of the Russian Federation, there are pharmaceutical formulations with the active pharmaceutical substance salicylic acid. The use of selective SPE for analysis is a promising direction of research in drug quality control.
Aim. Evaluation of the metrological characteristics of benzocaine quantitation by UV-spectrophotometry in certain pharmaceutical formulations using hypromellose sorbent for solid-phase extraction.
Material and methods. The sorbent using a method developed by us was obtained. Salicylic acid (FS.2.1.0634, Russia State Pharmacopoeia XV ed.) to form active binding sites in sorbent structure was applied. The sorbent structure is polycyanoacrylate matrix with hypromellose fragments, the surface area is 255.50 m2/g, pore volume is 0.1433 cm3, pore diameter is 5.32 nm. The sorption capacity of hypromellose sorbent for benzocaine was 12.2 ± 0.8 μg/g.
The SPE technique is proposed. SPE includes the stages: conditioning, sample addition and step-by-step elution with purified water and sodium hydroxide solution 0.1 mol/L. The spectrophotometer SF-56 was used to measure the absorbance at an analytical wavelength of 286 nm.
To evaluate the selectivity (specificity) of sample preparation during chromatographic (SPE) separation of pharmaceutical formulations, absorption spectra of eluates in the wavelength range of 200-400 nm were scanned. The salicylic acid identification in the eluate was carried out based on absorption peaks at 228 and 298 nm.The salicylic acid calibration curve in the range of 1-20 μg/ml.
To determination the metrological characteristics of salicylic acid quantitation method, 16 parallel determinations of samples of each pharmaceutical formulation were made. Statistical processing of the experimental results and determination of the metrological characteristics evaluation of analytical technique were carried out in accordance with general pharmacopoeial monograph (OFS.1.1.0013 "Statistical processing of results of physical, physicochemical, and chemical tests").
Results. When realizing the salicylic acid quantitation technique for measuring absorbance, it is advisable to use only the first portions of eluate (a solution of sodium hydroxide) in a volume of 5-10 ml were obtained.
The relative error in determining the average content of salicylic acid in the analyzed preparations ranged from 1.18 to 1.44% for methods with solid-phase extraction (SPE) and 1.86-2.62% in its absence. It has been shown that there is a statistically significant difference in reproducibility for all preparations, as indicated by F-criteria values ranging from 7.81 to 13.5, exceeding their tabulated values.
For the method without solid-phase extraction (SPE), there was an overestimation of the salicylic acid content in all cases, increasing the systematic error on average by 87.5%.
Conclusion. The possibility of using a selective hypromellose sorbent for sample preparation for salicylic acid quantitation determination in pharmaceutical formulations has been showed. The use of sorbent for analysis provides to systematic error decrement of salicylic acid quantitation by an average of 87.5%.