Simultaneous determination of water-soluble vitamins by over-pressure layer chromatography and photodensitometric detection.

An over-pressure layer chromatographic procedure with photodensitometric detection for the simultaneous determination of water-soluble vitamins in multivitamin pharmaceutical preparations was developed and evaluated. The method uses high-performance TLC (HPTLC) plates with silica gel as the thin-layer, and an n-butanol:pyridine:water mixture (50:35:15, v/v/v) as mobile phase at a rate of 0.25 mL/min for baseline separation. The quantitation was carried out without derivatization (vitamin B1, vitamin B2, vitamin B6, folic acid, nicotinamide, vitamin C) or after spraying ninhydrin reagent (calcium pantothenate) or 4-dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde (vitamin B12, biotin). This was applied to the analysis of multivitamin solutions. Satisfactory relative standard deviations and good recovery were obtained for all the vitamins examined. It was concluded that this method is fast, accurate, specific, and suitable for routine quality control use.