Development and validation of a LC method for the determination of pramipexole using an experimental design

A rapid and sensitive RP-HPLC method with UV detection for routine control of pramipexole in tablets was developed. Chromatography was performed with mobile phase containing a mixture of acetonitrile/phosphate buffer (60/40; v/v) with a flow rate of 0.8 mL min(-1). Quantitation was accomplished with the internal standard method; the procedure was validated by linearity (correlation coefficient = 0.99892), accuracy, robustness and intermediate precision. Limit of quantitation and limit of detection were found to be 4.5 mu g and 1.4 mu g respectively, which indicates the method is highly sensitive. Experimental design was used during validation to calculate method robustness and intermediate precision, for robustness test three factors were considered; percentage v/v of acetonitrile, flow rate and pH; an increase in the flow rate results in a decrease of concentration found of the drug, while the percentage of organic modifier and temperature have no important effect on the response. For intermediate precision measure the considered variables were: analyst, equipment, days and obtained RSD value (0.56%, n=24) which indicated a good precision of the analytical method. The method was found to be applicable for determination of the drug in tablet formulations and the results of the developed method were compared with those of the UV spectrophotometric method to access the active pramipexole content.