Determination of prednisolone acetate, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine in local pharmaceutical preparations by micellar electrokinetic chromatography.

A new, rapid and simple method is described and applied to resolve and quantify mixtures of prednisolone acetate, sulfacetamide and phenylefrine. The determination was accomplished by micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography (MEKC) using a fused silica capillary (57 cm x 75 microm ID). The separation was carried out at 25 degrees C and 30 kV, using a 5 mM phosphate-5 mM borate buffer adjusted to pH 8.2, 40 mM sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) as background electrolyte. Under these conditions, the run time was 6.5 min and the limits of quantification were about 0.5 mg l(-1) for every component. Repeatability and reproducibility studies achieved were showing no significant differences at 95% confidence level. Then, multivariate calibration regression spectrophotometric methods (PLS-1, PLS-2 and PCR) were applied providing, especially PLS-1, a clear example of the high resolving power of these techniques. The MEKC method has been applied for quantifying these compounds in different commercial pharmaceuticals products and the method gave good results when it is compared with the spectrophotometric method. The pharmaceutical preparations do not require any separation step by the two described procedures.