Concurrent determination of triclosan and flurbiprofen by high-performance liquid chromatography in simulated saliva and its application in dental nanogel formulation

Abstract

A new high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for determination of triclosan (TCS) and flurbiprofen (FBP) was successfully developed and validated at a single wavelength. The method involves extraction of the targeted drugs from nanogels and simulated saliva by using methanol as the extractant. The Agilent ZORBAX SB-C18 column (5 μm, 4.6 × 250 mm) was used for the chromatographic separations. The effects of various parameters were extensively evaluated and optimized. The optimal HPLC conditions were acetonitrile and 0.001 M citric acid (90:10, v/v) with a pH of 3.24 as the mobile phase, at a 0.3 mL/min flow rate under isocratic elution mode. Excellent sensitivity and specificity were achieved by ultraviolet (UV) detection at 242 nm. The method also demonstrated excellent linearity within the test range of 10–100 μg/mL with the correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.9998 for both the analytes. The practical applicability of the method was demonstrated by recovering TCS and FBP from nanogels and simulated saliva. The recovery of the analytes from the nanogels and the spiked simulated saliva samples was in the range of 97–98% and 96–99%, respectively, and their respective relative standard deviation (RSD) was less than 0.9% in both cases. System suitability parameters were found to be within acceptable limits. The method is simple, specific, and precise, and to the best of our knowledge, it is the first reported validated quantitative HPLC method for the concurrent determination of TCS and FBP in a pharmaceutical dental product. The method can be useful in the routine quality control analysis of dental formulations with TCS and FBP contents or products with a similar composition.